14 Things You Should Know About Nigerian Visual Artist, Njideka Akunyili Crosby

Njideka Akunyili Crosby is a visual artist from Nigeria who is doing big things in the art industry in the United States. Her painting, Bush Babies, was auctioned by Sotheby’s for a whopping sum of 1.2 billion naira.

Here is a biography about her.

1. Njideka was born and raised in 1983 in Enugu, Nigeria.

2. Her parents are late. Her father, Chike Akunyili, was a surgeon, and her mother, Dora Akunyili, was the former director-general of the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration (NAFDAC).

3. She is one of six siblings.

4. She moved to Lagos when she was 10 years old to attend secondary school at Queen’s College, Yaba, Lagos.

5. She moved to the United States in 1999 at age 16 for a gap year.

6. She studied biology and art at Swarthmore College, graduating in 2004, before studying at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where she earned a post-baccalaureate certificate in 2006.

7. Njideka later attended Yale University, bagging a master of fine arts degree.

8. She was selected as artist-in-residence at the highly regarded Studio Museum in Harlem after graduating from Yale in 2011.

9. Her first solo exhibition was organized at the Hammer Museum in 2015.

10. Njideka was named ‘Financial Times’ Woman of the Year in 2016.

11.  She won the prestigious MacArthur Genius Grant in 2017.

ALSO READ: Dora Akunyili’s Daughter, Njideka Wins Prestigious MacArthur Fellowship

12. She set a personal auction record with the sale of her painting Bush Babies for nearly $3.4 million at Sotheby’s New York in 2018.

13. She designed the mural that wrapped the Museum of Contemporary Art, Grand Avenue, Los Angeles, also in 2018.

14. She is married to Justin Crosby, a fellow artist.