Asantehene Otumfuo Osei Tutu II is expected to lead a short ceremony to reopen the Manhyia Palace Museum on Wednesday, May 1, 2024 in Kumasi in the Ashanti Region after the museum was closed three weeks ago.
The temporary closure of the museum on April 10 was to make way for the installation of newly acquired artefacts from three museums in the United States of America and Britain.
The artefacts have returned home after painstaking efforts by successive Asante Kings to no avail until the era of Otumfuo Osei Tutu II.
Seven of the artefacts were returned permanently by the Fowler Museum in Los Angeles in February this year while 15 gold and silver objects from the British Museum and 17 from the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) jointly arrived in the country on April 9, 2024.
The collections from the UK are in the country on temporary basis as they would be returned after six years.
These would collectively constitute the star objects of an international exhibition at the Manhyia Palace Museum.
Asantehene will officially lead the reopening tomorrow to make way for the public from May 2, 2024.
A list of expected guests at the event includes directors, curators and trustees of the BM and V&A from London as well as journalists and photographers from the BBC, Reuters, Aljazeera, The Daily Telegraph, The Art Newspaper, some leading figures of Government of Ghana, UNESCO and members of the diplomatic community.
Opened in 1995, Manhyia Palace Museum was originally built as a home for Asantehene, Nana Agyeman Prempeh I. He lived there from 1925 to 1931 on his return from British exile in the Seychelles.
Source: Manhyia Palace
