Section1: Technical
and, as a lot of the early birds at Kuona would testify, the number of tourists who passed through the Museum at that stage was huge and acted as a great motivator for the aspiring artists working there. The most notable development that no one seemed to realise was that there were art institution graduating students there at the same time that Kuona Trust was opening its doors. The Kenya Polytechnic and the Creative Arts Centre was releasing some notable names onto the art scene, among them the likes of Patrick Mukabi, Richard Kimathi, Mary Ogembo, Jimnah Kimani
4 and myself. Many of these names constituted the first bunch of artists to try and see what Kuona had to offer.
The first years were never easy because we needed our careers to take off quickly; we had expectations, and some of us had just graduated from art school and it was time to make a quick buck. All in all, as I have come to realise since I set my foot in that place in 1996, Kuona Trust no doubt provided us with an education in the arts that no university in the region could even fantasise about offering. It was the university of hard knocks for many of who are called the second generation of Kenyan artists. Kuona was a birth place, a home and an institution that has gone ahead to produce some of the most prolific visual artists in the East Africa region.
Back then young artists suffered from a great deal of social and artistic isolation on the Kenyan art scene for a variety of well-documented reasons. Kuona Trust’ s key success was to create a technical and creative space for these artists. Studio space was unaffordable