Malta is a country where we do not have a Symphony Orchestra Concert Hall. The venues which are used in Malta for classical concerts, such as the Manoel Theatre, the Mediterranean Conference Centre and the tiny Robert Samut Hall, create huge limitations and drawbacks for the orchestras and musicians performing in such venues.
This also renders the experience of patrons at such concerts an experience of far less quality than is the case of their European counterparts and those of much of the civilised world.
The result is that Malta’s national symphonic orchestra can only play at its best in a venue outside Malta. The irony is that we have made giant strides in the quality of our national orchestra’s musicians and conductors and, yet, they have no place in Malta that does justice to their professionalism.
An audience in Malta is unable to truly appreciate the true talent of musicians in Malta. If you are a Maltese resident and you crave a concert of our symphonic orchestra in a venue with proper modern acoustics, sod it, you have to check out their overseas tour and have no choice but to get onto a plane and experience their performance in a foreign city. Sad, but true.
When it comes to pictorial art, we must be one of the only countries in the world which lumps modern art and earlier art periods in one venue, in a museum which we call Muża.
A name of a museum which no non-Maltese-speaking person will ever figure out is a museum of art. This is not out of a lack of works of art, which are present in our national collection.
I honestly can’t explain why the modern art period, of which we can boast some fine artists of a European level, is so poorly respected to the point that we do not have a modern art museum dedicated to them. We just lump them with our baroque collection and other pre-modern art collections as though they are an afterthought.
When it comes to contemporary art, we do have an abundance of venues. Spazju Kreattiv hosts top exhibitions and there are a number of private venues in the capital and all across Malta.
Even quaint Mqabba has a wonderful exhibition space called Kamra ta’ Fuq, which churns out contemporary art exhibitions of artists based in Malta year-round. Yet, here we are lacking too in national respect for such contemporary art.
We have no national contemporary art museum
Some of the exhibitions held in recent years were of an extremely high level. The exhibitions of Austin Camilleri, Le. Iva. Anger is a lazy form of grief, Darren Tanti’s, Inaction is a weapon of mass destruction, and Clint Calleja’s Anamnesis were of an international level, which one would experience at top contemporary art galleries abroad.
Shouldn’t some of this local contemporary art of these relatively young artists already form part of our national collections? We have another drawback here as we have no national contemporary art museum.
Few people in Malta are aware of the great 19th and 20th-century architects of Malta: Giuseppe Psaila, Andrea Vassallo, Emanuele Luigi Galizia and Gustavo Vincenti, to name a few.
Most people would admire Balluta Buildings without having any idea who the Maltese architect who designed it was. One reason could be that we do not have a National Museum of Architecture.
Operas in Malta are performed in what are really and truly theatres and not a proper National Opera House. We do not have a National Decorative Arts Museum and neither do we have a dedicated National Sculpture Museum, and the list goes on.
Why are we so lacking when compared to the cities we visit overseas? It is definitely not in view of a lack of talent. We are brimming with home-grown artistic talent and have been so for many centuries.
It’s because we have a complete lack of priorities when it comes to investing in culture.
In 2019 we spent over €5 million to buy Villa Guardamangia simply because one of our colonisers, the late Queen Elizabeth II, lived in it.
I happened to visit this villa on a Heritage Malta open-day event. The house is not of any major architectural value, and I found it odd that, back then, the next in line to the British throne would live in such a relatively modest building, rather than, say, in Verdala Palace or Selmun Palace.
There are countless villas and palazzi all over Malta and Gozo which are more prestigious and are of a higher architectural value. When purchased by the Maltese government, the villa was literally falling to bits.
It will cost Heritage Malta millions to restore it and further considerable amounts to set up a museum in the name of the late queen.
In November 2023, Heritage Malta spent €350,860 on a sword that Napoleon Bonaparte gave to a French admiral. Let’s break it down.
We spent €350,860 on an item which one of our colonisers presented as a gift to a French national. How does such an artefact feature in any way as part of our heritage and be worthy of spending so much public money on? For crying out loud, we are independent and have been so for 60 years.
Mario Cutajar and the rest of his Heritage Malta team are clearly more interested in the heritage of our colonisers and have clearly got their priorities totally screwed up.
It’s sad that public money will not be spent on the many basic museums and venues of which we are so lacking but, rather, on glorifying the history of our colonisers. It’s really sad.
Paul RadmilliPaul Radmilli is a lawyer and PN member of the Sliema local council.