Superintendence of cultural heritage

Dreams do come true, in spite of what is said. Education Minister Louis Galea and Museums Director Anthony Pace have realised their combined dream. Cultural heritage has been sanctioned by Parliament. The Bill received the President's assent and is now part of the statute book as the Cultural Heritage Act, 2002.

What does all this mean? Section 7 of this Act provides that there shall be a Superintendent who is responsible for and manages the cultural heritage of Malta. The mission of the Superintendence is to take over from the state the obligation of ensuring the protection of cultural heritage. It has also the duty of making this heritage accessible to the people, both local and foreign.

Culture defined

The next question is what compromises the culture we have inherited from our forefathers, rulers and nature? Section 2 interprets "cultural heritage" as meaning all sorts of inherited objects including sites, and deposits, groups of buildings and their relative records in any shape and form. It also involves intangible cultural assets such as arts, traditions, customs, skills and crafts. Also incorporated are the performing and applied arts. To round up the definition, the Act also enumerates intangible assets, which have a historical, artistic and ethnographic value. Forming part too is cultural property, both movable and immovable.

Corollaries of 'protection' are exploration, conservation, investigation, restoration. And surveillance. Exploration is carried out on land or at sea to discover new data for finding new movable and immovable items of cultural heritage.

'Investigation' involves obtaining and recording any relative information. It includes any works to identify, discover, excavating, revealing, recovering and removing any object or material situated in the whereabouts of cultural property.

All that has been described so far does not mean that the wheel has been rediscovered. It was all there. What was lacking was the holistic legal framework, and the all-important necessary funds and adequately trained and skilled human resources.

Surveillance is the activity which for the first time obliges an authority to control, directs, monitors, regulates investigates and records cultural heritage. It is sincerely hoped that the Superintendence be properly and adequately equipped to do the job provided in the Act.

Legal personality

A very positive and essential legal provision is the bestowing upon the Superintendence of legal personality and judicial representation. This has been made possible because its has been made a body corporate. There is quite a misconception about this point. It is well known that an entity set up by a political protocol is claiming in vain and quite illogically (and therefore illegally) to have a board of directors and a managing director. Such measures would have been all right if the entity had been registered with the Registrar of Companies.

If the Superintendence had not been authorised by law to be a body corporate it would not have been conducive to exercise or perform its functions under the Cultural Heritage Act

In recent months several misguided accusations were made against the director of museums. There were unjust calls for his resignation. All these vicious attacks did not impress much either his minister or the Cabinet. Mr Pace was promoted to Superintendent of Cultural Heritage. In his new appointment he will bring all his enthusiasm, deep knowledge and renowned professionalism that has been boiling in him for some years. In fact, even before the 1992 Valletta Convention on Cultural Heritage Mr Pace started dreaming about the issue. A couple of years later he began working with his minister for the drafting of the Act.

Functions and duties

The multifarious functions and duties that Mr Pace is assuming includes the drawing up and eventual publication of the national inventory of cultural property belonging to the State the Church and existing foundations. The inventory exists more or less as a list. What is now needed is a database with all possible ramifications and permutations that it assumes the state-of-the-art professional inventory required in this specialised field.

Rather on the same lines the Superintendent has to ensure that adequate documentation be kept and archived in relation to excavation, exploration and search for antiquities and discoveries that might precede development.

Again a database will have to be constructed for practically every task enumerated in Section 7 dealing with the functions and obligations of the Superintendent.

Yet perhaps the major task that can best be descried as herculean is the masking the people appreciate that the best and most precious possession of the Maltese Islands is their culture and its resultant heritage. It is true that there is already a beginning but there is a much longer way to go towards full realisation of its intrinsic worth.

This above all. The structure has been legalised by an Act of Parliament. The Superintendence must be given the tools to perform what has to be done. There must be a pro-active political will to do just this, and this is essential for all successive cabinets for years to come.