Shaun Grech’s opinion piece (‘Where is Malta’s national art?’, April 28) has raised important points about how museums manage their art collections and how much of that art is seen by the public.

As someone who has worked closely in this field, I agree with many of his concerns and would like to offer some lesser-known insights, focusing specifically on Malta’s National Museum of Art, known as MUŻA.

Traditional museum institutions often operate under a 19th-century collections management model that separates display from storage. On average, approximately 90% of their collections are in storage. Malta’s museums align with this stereotypical museum idea.

In the case of Malta’s national art collection, we are referring to a collection approximately the size of what a medium-tier European museum would hold. The exponential growth of the collection is with the modern and contemporary sections that have proliferated since the 1970s, exponentially so since 2010.

This growth creates the pressure to show more works that Grech’s opinion piece rightly highlights, but, with traditional museum models, this is nearly impossible, much like trying to pour the sea into a small hole on a sandy beach.

Even building new museums won’t address the issue, as collections grow faster than new museums can be built or established. I’m not saying Malta shouldn’t have a modern and/or contemporary art museum, but even that new space would quickly fill up.

A rotating display system is one solution developed within the MUŻA concept’s remit. Thanks to this system, artworks would have been displayed for varying lengths and in different settings depending on size, theme, relevance and importance. Such a system can never function in a traditional museum set-up. It would be left with little space for modern and contemporary art within a chronology that would have to exhibit centuries of artistic production. This is where the state-of-the art storage facility comes into the picture.

As project lead, I had championed a state-of-the-art open storage facility on the museum’s top floor, deliberately designed to allow public access and engagement with stored collections. For the sceptics, it is the same concept guiding the Boijmans Art Depot, in Rotterdam, inaugurated in November 2021, three years after the museum at Auberge d’Italie was inaugurated.

This unique infrastructure for a Maltese museum is now relegated to a run-of-the-mill storage facility and, with the museum now moving back to a chronological display, its original function and purpose are lost.

The open storage facility was intended to function as a pivot to a thematic display featuring artworks constantly on rotation to a scheduled, curated programme. This would also be communicated and agreed to with living artists and, more importantly, with the heirs who own copyright to works of art in the collection.

Traditional museum institutions often operate under a 19th-century collections management model that separates display from storage- Sandro Debono

This infrastructure would have supported the system of rotating displays, whereby access to artworks would still be possible when in storage. Besides other measures, this would have kept art accessible throughout the year in various ways and means.

Incidentally, the right to access artworks by just about anyone, artists included, is a legal right enshrined in the Cultural Heritage Act 2002.

This solution would have decisively addressed some of the concerns raised in Grech’s opinion piece. Curatorial method and storage facility infrastructure are the two sides of the same coin. They were in place, yet, never set in motion for a list of reasons I hope to explain clearly in future contributions. In short, the public never got to see this concept in practice. The reasons are too many to list in such a short contribution.

Sceptics may still view thematic displays as a passing trend and unsuitable for national museums. A good read explaining the thinking behind these displays would be The Transhistorical Museum (Valiz, Amsterdam, 2015). There are lots of case studies to cite too. The Tate Gallery, in London has championed thematic displays since the 1980s – 40 years in the making.

More recent case studies include the Hunterian Art Gallery, in Glasgow and two national museums – The National Gallery, in Helsinki and the Ateneum (Finland) – and the National Gallery of Serbian Art Matica Srpska, in Novi Sad (Serbia). There is much more on this list which keep growing longer.

A final note: I respect the recent decision to go back to chronology and move on from the MUŻA concept, especially if this was taken by expertise with the right level of competence in the field. But I’m eager to see how the new, albeit old, direction will meet the expectations of Malta’s art community. The questions Grech raised still deserve clear answers.

Sandro Debono

Sandro Debono is an international museum consultant with a PhD in heritage policy and collections development and executive board member at the Network of European Museums Organisations.

www.sandrodebono.net