Paintings and sculpture touted as among the finest in East Africa are now on show, as a foretaste of an ambitious project designed to document the entire history of art in the region. From prehistoric jewellery and pottery to the latest digital prints, this may well prove to be too broad a sweep to detail in one permanent exhibition.

The result could turn out to be sketchy. Nonetheless, it is a brave attempt by the National Museums of Kenya and will sit well next to their successful retelling of the country’s history, from pre-colonial and colonial times to the state’s emergence as an independent nation.

Alongside the permanent history-of-art exhibition, planned for the upstairs Creativity Gallery in the main Nairobi museum, will be series of smaller shows by invited artists, to flavour the dish as it were.

Meanwhile, as staff contact artists and scour the storage racks and ferret in dark corners for suitable exhibits, they have put on a temporary exhibition of some 50 or so paintings and sculptures by some of the artists who may eventually be featured.

Most striking is a droll wedding scene by Sebastian Kiarie that commands the end wall of the gallery, while nearby hang a couple of pictures by the all-too-imitable Kivuthi Mbuno. They are too high to be viewed properly (or maybe I am too low) but appear to be early works, before he began to dot little black birds on every object in his fantasy landscapes.

Beneath them is a typical Jak Katarikawe of smiling cattle, and next to that a dark and mysterious painting by Sao Gamba, the film-maker and painter who died 10 years ago. He documented Luo rituals and this picture, of a woman apparently giving birth, is of the Walumbe Life Ceremony.

The museum held a retrospective show of this talented artist’s work last year so let us hope that the new exhibition allows his films and paintings to find a new, appreciative audience.

Also vibrant of the walls are a couple of huge paintings by Shine Tani, featuring acrobats and an early Zebra by Elijah Ooko. Some of these pictures are from the museum’s permanent collection; some are owned by the artists and are for sale.

In the adjoining gallery that will eventually house the temporary exhibitions hang 24 paintings, including a distinctive Surrealist piece by Meek Gichugu. Also of interest are three lithographs by Mexican artists donated by their embassy.

What caught my eye was The Motherland by Damien Flores, a beautifully controlled print that linked the modern republic to its ancient Aztec past. As a taster, this is promising enough and it certainly whets the appetite for the finished, more considered dish.

Across town at the Kenya Cultural Centre opposite the National Theatre, William Ndwiga of the peripatetic Little Art Gallery has set up his exhibition of paintings by Boniface Maina and Michael Musyoka, last seen a few weeks ago at the Village Market in Gigiri.

This time however, he has pepped up the show with the introduction of a guest artist — one James Njoroge.

I enjoy Maina’s somewhat Surrealist vision and the meticulous Musyoka’s riffs on traditional musical instruments, but here it is Njoroge who takes the eye. He is billed as a collage artist, yet… is it really collage or a sort of mosaic of paper pieces glued down to make what would otherwise be fairly realistic oil paintings?

By collage, I understand bits and pieces of stuff, usually paper, stuck onto the picture’s surface that add a sudden twist, a new dimension, to an otherwise straightforward subject.

For instance, the introduction of eyes, mouths, hair and odd figures by Wangeci Mutu, Richard Kimathi, Anne Mwiti and others turn their pictures into something extraordinary. These works could be produced no other way.

Proof of this can be seen currently at the One-Off Gallery in Rosslyn where Beatrice Wanjiku continues her relentless self-examination by transforming the human head into something quite terrifying with pieces of skulls, glittering teeth and eyeballs taken from medical textbooks. You can shudder but you also have to think; maybe even admire.

On the other hand, Njoroge simply substitutes cut paper for brushstrokes and produces pictures that could be done in any number of ways… paint, pencil, charcoal, ink, coloured crayons, his mosaics, painting by numbers and even needlework at a push.

Still, there are about them things to enjoy — the painstaking craftsmanship for a start. These are clever pictures that advertise their maker’s skill.

Then there is the colour choice, the composition, the way he reproduces tonal depth, light and shade and, of course, his subject matter, which here is the voice of protest. There is an almost frightening quality to the way his central figures march in anger and wave their fists… this is a demo you don’t want to be caught up in.

Like the pretty little scenes of the veteran artist Rosemary Karuga — who works in the same mosaicy manner but with altogether different, twee subject matter — these are pictures that could please a buyer for years.

Frank Whalley runs Lenga Juu, a fine arts and media consultancy based in Nairobi.