Nigerian Art and Tourism: Exploring the Cultural Tourism Potentials

Tourism and its economic potentials are by no doubt embedded in Nigeria's visual arts either pre-historic or the present. Either in its remoteness or contemporaneity, Nigerian visual art has continued to reveal its relevance and functionality in form of utilities and aesthetics, but most importantly as a form of tourist attraction, thanks to Nigeria's rich and enormous cultural heritage and cultural resources. Art exhibition provide avenues for useful ways of understanding art of other cultures, enhancing the purity of aesthetic appreciation to enrich the viewer's experience and broaden their mindset about exotic or difficult and unfamiliar art (Diepeveen and Van Laar 2001). But the most important reason for this book is to search, locate, identify and project the tourism potentials in Art exhibitions in developing nations endowed with rich cultural heritage/resources such as Nigeria. Art exhibition and tourism are inseparable tools in national economic development. This book is a means of telling the world about Nigeria's rich cultural heritage and resources and the art of her numerous ethnic nations' culture which we believe could aid our national economic development.