The East African Saturday May 08 2021 Advertisement A comprehensive review of misappropriated Kenyan objects of art is on display at the Invisible Inventories exhibition in the Nairobi National Museum. The exhibition comes after a two-year collaborative study of the International Inventories Programme (IIP) to investigate a body of cultural items held in institutions across the globe. The IIP is a partnership of the National Museums of Kenya, Goethe-Institut, the Nest (Nairobi), the Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum in Cologne and the Weltkulturen Museum in Frankfurt. Walking through the exhibition, I immediately noticed several empty stands, a visual testament to the missing items. The lost works include ceremonial instruments, shields, smoking pipes, jewellery, carvings and more. Though housed abroad, not all the missing items are not all viewable. At the Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum in Cologne, 82 out of 83 Kenyan pieces have not been publicly displayed.