Why Google chief is investing big in Kenyan artists

Opinion and Analysis

Google Kenya country manager Charles Murito. FILE PHOTO | DIANA NGILA  

By Margaretta wa Gacheru

In Summary

• Global tech firm executive says platform at Dusit D2 Hotel will help creatives mentor others and earn a living without middlemen exploiting them.

Ever since December 2014, Charles Murito has been inviting local artists to exhibit their work at a space of his choice on a monthly basis.

At the beginning, the exhibitions were essentially private as they took place in his new home in Kilileshewa where personal friends came to see — and potentially buy — the artworks.

So successful were these shows, both for the artists and the Kenyans who were often just as enamoured with the works of artists like Patrick Kinuthia, Adrian Nduma and Patrick Mukabi that he decided to take his end-of-month Saturday programme public.

That’s how it happened that this Saturday afternoon from midday a small but select group Kenyan painters will showcase their ‘Art in the Den’ of the new Dusit D2 Hotel off Riverside Drive in Westlands, Nairobi.

Mr Murito, the Google Kenya country manager, has agreed with Dusit general manager Michael Metaxas to let the artists take over the spacious conference hall once a month so the public can meet the artists, see their art and potentially buy it at prices that aren’t inflated by middlemen.

“What I especially like about the arrangement is that the artists will be able to go home with every penny they make from the sale of their art,” said Mr Murito, who besides being an avid admirer and collector of Kenyan art is also in charge of one, if not the leading IT company in the world.

It’s also a brand name that is so popular the public has even turned it into a verb!

For him, art is a hobby as well as a passion that’s inspired him to cover the walls of his new home with works by up-and-coming young artists like Nduta Kariuki, Waweru Gichuhi, and Teddy Mwai as well as by more acclaimed painters like Mukabi, Nduma and Kinuthia.

Not that he was a voracious art lover before he returned to Kenya in 2013 after living abroad for nearly two decades, first in the United States where he went to university and subsequently worked for Warner Brothers, then in the UK from where he would commute all around Africa and the Middle East for MTV, and finally back in Kenya where his background of working in media, marketing, management and technology made him the prime candidate to spearhead Google’s growth.

But being someone whose professional career has often involved his uncanny ability to spot untapped talent, he was quick to see the unsung artistry and immense potential of Kenyan creative minds, starting with Patrick Kinuthia, whose vivid and colourful portraits first caught his eye.

Through Mr Kinuthia he got to meet many other local artists who were often struggling, which is why he’s wanted to help them out.

“I’m well aware I wouldn’t be where I am today if I hadn’t been helped by people who became my mentors,” said Mr Murito, who made own way to the US without scholarship or a sponsor, but rather worked his way through Woodbury University in Burbank, California, doing a myriad of jobs.

But he admits he might not have made it through if it hadn’t been for mentors like the president of the university, Richard King who he met by serendipity.

“I would’ve had to drop out if he hadn’t helped me get a partial scholarship and a school loan in my last year,” Mr Murito said.

So he’s especially sensitive to the financial burden that many gifted artists struggle under, which is one reason he’s opened up a space where artists don’t pay a penny either as a commission to a middle man on every sale nor do they pay for the exhibition space since he makes all those arrangements.