We invite you to browse our extensive galleries to find the very highest quality authentic art from Africa.

Join our Art Acquisition Club for discount pricing and complete access to the web site. Non-members will see our watermark across the the full size images here but AA Club members - after logging into the site - will have a clear view. Also, AA Club Members have the option to display a far larger and more detailed version each image - full screen / high resolution. Your full cost of becoming a member will be credited to your account and will be applied in full to your purchases.

Some items are offered for sale ONLY to AA Club members - while non-members will not see these items as available for purchase. So, as an AA Club member, always remember to log in when you visit the Mount Kenya Art Galleries online store.

Forty years ago, when I first set foot on this continent, the extraordinary wealth of African art did not immediately register in my mind. I didn't see any art at all. Like most other first-time visitors, it was the wildlife, the vast horizons, the people and their various cultures - so different from ours - that excited my curiosity.

Sales from the Mount Kenya Art Galleries help to support the work of the neighboring Mount Kenya Wildlife Conservancy Visit us there for more information about our work to protect Africa's wildlife.

Over time, my husband Don and I became involved more or less full-time in the conservation of endangered species and together with our friend, film actor William (Bill) Holden, we worked for several years to establish a unique wildlife sanctuary in East Africa, the Mount Kenya Game Ranch. My own special project was to set up and run an "orphanage" for the care and rehabilitation of vulnerable young animals whose mothers had been victim of predation of one kind or another(read more about this at www.animalorphanagekenya.com)

In rare intervals between regular rescue safaris and the raising of abandoned infant animals, I began quite casually to accumulate a collection of African objets d'art of which I had very little knowledge. They were just "things" I picked up that appealed to me and would enjoy looking at, hung on the walls or otherwise decoratively placed around our house at the ranch.

It was Bill Holden who eventually fanned the spark of what was to become a more serious interest in indigenous art. He first relieved me of some of my more cherished objets and then pressured me to acquire more - both for him and for myself.

And so it happened. I became seriously acquisitive, traveling widely, mostly in West and Central Africa, in search of the art I'd read about but had never seen in its "natural habitat." In the course of these expeditions I met many art experts and aficionados, made great friends and learned much that is not written about in the textbooks on the subject.

Most importantly, I learned to open both my eyes and mind to the intrinsic value of the paintings and pieces I tracked down - learning specifically to recognize the rare, or unfamiliar, or different... or, in any event, the aesthetically sublime amongst the vast continental out-pouring of what, by any definition, is African "fine art."

Collecting soon became a way of life, or at least an important part of my life: A never-ending, never-palling indulgence of the senses and a constant pleasure in sharing with others what the artists had given the world of themselves.

It was essentially for this reason - to introduce a wider public to the distinctive creative talent that so appealed to me - that I set about founding a permanent gallery on the Game Ranch.

What eventually developed a complex of galleries, although still under one roof, was sited next to the world-famous Mount Kenya Safari Club. It provided the club's constant flow of guests from America, Europe and elsewhere with an additional, free attraction: An exhibition of a large, representative collection of the best of new and old African art. Not all, but much of the work displayed was offered for sale, of course, as it still is.

The Mount Kenya Art Galleries have since become a well-respected, internationally-known landmark on the continental African art scene, attracting both first-time visitors and a long-time loyal corps of connoisseurs who regularly revisit. And it's to help all these collectors, new and old, to keep in touch with what's current and especially interesting in the galleries that this web-site has been created. We will, of course, be up-dating the pages on a regular basis.

While taking advantage of modern online communications we remain pledged to maintaining the embedded old fashioned style of personal service on which our longtime customers have come to rely.

I will myself continue to oversee the collection and will be happy to help AAC Members with advice whenever needed.

Iris Hunt,
Founder/Director
Mount Kenya Art Galleries