All activities / Museums & Galleries / Kigali
Museums & Galleries in Kigali
Rwanda's clean, hilly capital, spread over a series of ridges in the centre of the country. A calm, walkable city that pairs a serious culture of memory with a growing contemporary-art and dining scene, and serves as the road hub north to the gorillas and east to Akagera's savannah.
Why here
Beyond its memorials, Kigali has a lively visual-art scene, and two very different collections show its range. Inema Arts Center, founded in 2012 by six self-taught brothers, is the beating heart of it, a working studio and gallery in Kacyiru where you can watch resident painters and sculptors at their easels, buy directly from them, and catch weekly dance and drumming sessions. Across town, the Rwanda Art Museum occupies the former Presidential Palace in Kanombe, showing contemporary Rwandan and international work around themes of healing and reconciliation, with the wreckage of the president's plane still in the grounds as a piece of history in its own right. Together they move from a raw, living studio to a polished national collection, and give a fuller picture of how Rwandan artists are telling the country's story.
Best months
Both are indoor and open year-round, making this a reliable option in any weather. Inema is liveliest when the resident artists are in and on its scheduled dance evenings, usually best in the late afternoon. The Rwanda Art Museum is quietest on weekday mornings. Public museums generally open daily from 9am to 5pm and close on 7 April for the genocide commemoration.
Getting there & around
Inema Arts Center is in Kacyiru, a short taxi ride from central Kigali, with a small cafe on site and art that can be shipped internationally. The Rwanda Art Museum is further out near the airport in Kanombe, about twenty minutes by car, and is one of eight national museums under the Rwanda Cultural Heritage Academy, so a combined ticket can save money if you visit more than one.
Skill levels: beginner
Schools & guides (2)
Inema Arts Center
OrganizerInema Arts Center is a studio and gallery in the Kacyiru district of Kigali, founded in 2012 by six self-taught artist brothers led by the painters Emmanuel Nkuranga and Innocent Nkurunziza. It gives resident Rwandan artists working space and a platform, sells their paintings and sculptures with international shipping, and runs regular dance and drumming performances plus workshops. Its outreach programmes use art to support women and children in the surrounding community.
Rwanda Art Museum
OrganizerThe Rwanda Art Museum occupies the former Presidential Palace at Kanombe in Kigali, showing contemporary artworks by Rwandan and international artists around the themes of healing, reconciliation and peace. It is one of eight national museums managed by the Rwanda Cultural Heritage Academy, the state body that also runs the Kandt House and Ethnographic museums. The palace grounds preserve the wreckage of the aircraft whose downing on 6 April 1994 triggered the genocide.