For more than four decades, Emeritus Professor of Sculpture, El Anatsui, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, (UNN) has been an art scholar, sculptor and mentor. And, in these roles he has influenced and inspired a generation of artists nationally, regionally, continentally and globally; for among Professor Anatsui’s former students and mentees are art professors and highly respected artists within and outside the African continent. Anatsui’s relationship with UNN and the Nsukka community dates from 1975 when he arrived from his native Ghana to lecture at that university. Today, his studio practice in Nsukka engages 40 full time and 20 part-time assistants and mentees; 20 of whom, through the support of the studio, have obtained degrees and diplomas in a variety of disciplines from a number of universities and polytechnics.

The sculptures of El Anatsui are represented and shown in more than 60 major international museums, as well as globally recognised art galleries, auction houses such as Sotheby’s and distinguished individual art collectors. Some of these include the British Museum, London; the Guggenheim, Abu Dhabi; the Centre Pompidou, Paris; the Metropolitan Museum of Arts, N.Y.; the Osaka Foundation of Culture, Osaka; the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto;  the de Young Museum, San Francisco; New York’s Museum of Modern Art; the National Gallery of Modern Art, Lagos; Ghana National Art Collection, Accra; the World Bank Art Collection; and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Seattle.  

Professor Anatsui has exhibited on every continent at not less than 70 solo exhibitions and 220 group exhibitions. Critical reviews of his art are featured in internationally respected art publications such as the Journal of Contemporary Art, Art in America and Art World, London. Other news media include the BBC, CNN, Newsweek, the N. Y. Times, the Wall Street Journal, Brazil’s Illustrada, Belgium’s De Standard, The Economist, Financial Times, London’s Telegraph and  Evening Standard, the Boston Globe, South Africa’s Financial Mail and Business Day, the Japan Times,  and Kenya’s The Nation, as well as major Nigerian newspapers like The Guardian, and wire services such as the Pan African News Agency (PANA). He is also the subject of several books, academic theses, art documentaries and films. Professor Anatsui holds honorary doctorate degrees from Harvard University, the University of Cape Town (UCT) and his alma mater, the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST).

He is also an Honorary Royal Academician of Britain’s Royal Society of Arts (RSA) and has been elected to the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Among some of the art laurels El Anatsui holds is Japan’s International Praemium Imperiale Award - considered the art world’s Nobel Prize. He was also the recipient at the 56th Venice Biennale of the highly revered Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement Award. In one of the various citations honoring Emeritus Professor El Anatsui, he was described as: “creating art that is globally acknowledged as encompassing a panorama of critical observations, while being diverse in his choice of tools and creative processes. Indeed, the uniqueness of El Anatsui’s art lies in its ability to transform seemingly insignificant objects into truly monumental sculptures which address issues such as identity, consumerism, history, the environment, and other key universal concerns”.