The now Rwanda Arts Museum had been the residence of two Rwandan Presidents, Juvenal Habyarimana who lived there until 1994 and Pastor Bizimungu who lived there from 1994 to 2000.
Since 2003, the building had been Presidential Palace Museum and was under management of the Institute of National Museum of Rwanda (INMR).
According to INMR, changing the palace into arts museum came from visitors’ request and artists who want to develop the sector.
Speaking at the launch of the museum yesterday, INMR Managing Director, Amb. Robert Masozera said that they are carrying reforms in different museums and today, three museums have been changed.
He said that they started from former environmental museum in Karongi, museum showcasing Rwanda’s colonial history in Kigali and the next was Presidential Palace.
“This is based on visitors’ and partners’ wishes; they suggested different changes in exhibition and the name of the museum. There were no historical things to see in the museum,” he explained.
“We used to tell history of two presidents who lived here and people go uncontended, that is where we started to think about something that we can add here, and that’s where we brought the art museum,” he added.
The same museum has been in Nyanza District since 2006 to 2018 in King Mutara III Rudahigwa Palace.
Currently, the museum has a total of 127 artifacts, among them 117 were in Nyanza based museum.
He encouraged artists to bring their artifacts to the place whose current monthly visits stand at 35,000.
Presidential Palace has been the fourth most visited museum, after the Capaign Against Genocide Museum, ethnographic museum at Huye, and Nyanza King’s Palace.
Currently Rwanda has eight museums with 200,000 visitors and earn the country about Rwf200 million per month.
The launch of the museum coincided with the International Museum Day which was celebrated under the theme “Hyper-connected museums: New approaches, new publics.”
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