FRANCIS SULTANA shares his eighth monthly arts and culture column in collaboration with Times of Malta, in which he presents a set of must-see local and international events he encourages readers to explore.

I have just returned to Malta following a whistle-stop tour of New York. It was so fabulous to return to the city after over two years’ absence. Like Europe, it seems that summer 2022 in NYC is going to be one to remember and you could really feel the sense of anticipation in the air.

It’s no surprise that some of the biggest names in the art world were making their mark once again. For a city that celebrates the new, it was encouraging to see that some classics remain as topical and relevant as they did almost 50 years ago!

Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure was the show on everybody’s lips. The recent auction of his work Untitled (1982), which achieved a sale price of $85 million, has set the tone for a showstopper of an exhibition which is on until the end of the month.

Set across 1500 square feet of the Starrett-Lehigh Building, the exhibition has been curated by the artists’ sisters Jeanine and Lisane who run the estate, and features over 200 pieces of never-before-seen or rarely seen items including paintings, photographs and artefacts, and takes visitors from Basquiat’s early childhood through posthumous accomplishments, and gives context to how his heritage and family informed his work.

Designed by David Adjaye, the exhibition also features recreations of Basquiat’s studio and the VIP room at the Palladium nightclub which featured two of his works.

Over at Hauser and Wirth, another icon of the New York art scene is on show. Cindy Sherman 1977-1982 features a selection of Sherman’s groundbreaking work on the themes of female identity within contemporary media.

Untitled Film Stills features 70 black-and-white images of invented characters that mimic the type of publicity shots used by movies during the 1950s and 1960s.

These created worlds of Sherman, that are filled with an unwritten narrative, became the basis for much of Sherman’s work. The series of Rear Screen Projections in colour show Sherman returning to her studio where she used a rear projection technique favoured by Alfred Hitchcock.

Centrefolds shows Sherman playing with the idea of the female nude within men’s magazines but subverted by being fully clothed. The show is on until July 29.

Like Sherman, who has proved herself the mistress of reinvention, the queen of British contemporary art, Gillian Wearing, is currently on show at the Guggenheim with a show entitled Wearing Masks. Just like Sherman, Wearing uses photographs of herself to explore identity and probe the tension between self and society and the media.

It’s no surprise that some of the biggest names in the art world were making their mark once again

Featuring more than 100 pieces, the exhibition traces the artist’s development from her earliest Polaroids to her latest self-portraits, all of which explore the performative nature of identity. The show closes this week; so if you are in New York, then do rush to see it.

Now to another queen of New York, the Anna Wintour Costume Centre at The Met. In America: A Lexicon of Fashion is a wonderful exploration of US fashion, presented like a patchwork quilt with each piece enclosed in a case that represents the patches of a quilt; approximately 100 men’s and women’s pieces by a diverse range of designers from the 1940s to the present are featured, covering themes such as nostalgia, belonging, delight, joy, wonder, affinity, confidence, strength, desire, assurance, comfort, and consciousness.

Part Two of the exhibition can be seen alongside the American Wing period rooms.

On to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and the occasion of her Platinum Jubilee. The Union Jacks and street parties may have been happening all over the UK but here in Malta, we too have a very special relationship with Her Majesty, and I was delighted to hear that the government has purchased Villa Guardamangia and will be transforming it into a museum.

The queen and Prince Philip spent two years (1949-51) living in Malta when Prince Philip was stationed here and by all accounts, it was one of the happiest times of her life, when the couple lived a relatively normal existence, shopping in Valletta in her Morris Minor and taking regular boat trips around the island.

If you are over in the UK this summer, there are a series of exhibitions celebrating the queen’s accession to the throne including the portraits by Dorothy Wilding at Buckingham Palace that became the base for the postage stamps until 1971.

At Windsor, the coronation robes and the iconic coronation photograph by Cecil Beaton are on show, while at Holyrood House in Edinburgh, there are the jubilee outfits that have been worn by the queen over the years.

Stay tuned for the next monthly cultural column in July. If you would like to check out what I am up to each month, follow me on Instagram @francis_sultana.