It has taken me till midsummer to find the time and the disposition to once again get round to write about something close to my heart: The establishment of a Museum of Modern Art in Malta. To set the record straight at the outset, a Museum of Modern Art, or MOMA from now on, houses the only works of artists who are deceased and encompasses the late 19th century to the late 20th. With that out of the way we can go ahead lest any of the bloggers think I have ulterior personal motives. The only thing is that maybe one day when my persona has long been lost and forgotten, with luck, one of my works may, with some small aplomb, be installed in our Malta MOMA; but that is all. Hopefully they will get my name right.

I have been informed, but never officially, that a wing of the Fine Arts Museum in South Street is being prepared to house 'modern art'. The thing is that the Fine Arts itself is in dire need of an overhaul. So where does that leave us?

My dream is to have a MOMA. Nowhere can we enjoy the creations of all those artists to whom we owe so much both as artists, critics, connoisseurs, collectors, dilettantes and just ordinary citizens. There is nowhere where we can see the works of Emvin Cremona or Esprit Barthet, Willie Apap or Carmelo Mangion to mention just a few. Post Antoine Favray, it is as if Malta gasped through a cultural desert. The back rooms at the Fine Arts display a smattering of Giannis, Schranzes and Pullicinos as if just to prove that someone was in fact painting if not flourishing in the 19th century. Those huge fantastical Ducros landscapes in the backrooms bring tears of pain to my eyes as they resemble elephants trapped in matchboxes. As for the 20th century, only lately was a lovely Arcidiacono watercolour of the Royal Opera House purchased at auction by the Museum. There is very little else.

Modern art can be roughly and very basically described as the direction the applied arts took after the dramatic development of the camera. That sort of explanation gives a rudimentary reason for the distortions and permutations that hallmarked the various experimental movements that dominated the last century many of which still perplex the man in the street even today. There is nowhere in Malta that is readily accessible to the public that works that vaguely fit the bill can be seen let alone explained. The lacuna is humongous!

I have it on good authority that a few years ago representatives of the Guggenheim Foundation were in Malta with a view of setting up a Guggenheim here. For the sake of readers who many not know I will just tell you that the establishment of the Guggenheim in Bilbao has made the area the most visited in Spain. Apparently Malta was written off because of some bureaucratic misunderstanding! Can anyone with a modicum of background knowledge about modern art not howl in frustration at what Malta just threw away?

Many years ago, having been sent on scholarship to study Venetian Art at the Istituto Cini on Isola di San Giorgio by the Italian Cultural Institute, I befriended the American students whose job it was to maintain and run the Venice Guggenheim on Dorsoduro that houses Peggy Guggenheim's unique personal collection of Klees, Miros, Picassos, Modiglianis, Pollocks and Braques and other wonderful examples of 20th century art in the lovely but discreet Le Corbusier house that hides so effectively behind what remains of Palazzo Venier. The museum had then been open for just two years. I had in those days never been exposed to that sort of art before except as a footnote in an art book and dusting a Giacometti did not give me the deep thrill it would give me today nor did mowing the lawn around a Moore nor twirling the Calder mobile either! I feel strangely embarrassed now however, so far removed from 'modernity' was the cultural atmosphere in which I was brought up that I was then unable to feel, let alone begin to understand, what in fact had begun to be conceived almost a century before my birth. That proves how artistically anachronistic Malta was then and to a certain extent, still is now. Thanks to internet and popular travel, the exposure to and the understanding and appreciation of modern and contemporary art today is greatly facilitated, however nothing beats the real thing and as our own artistic heritage is sadly absent from the net it is essential that the plans for a Maltese MOMA should be made public and fast.

So, if this new wing of the Fine Arts is in fact being renovated as a MOMA when may we expect to be asked to its inauguration?

kzt@onvol.net

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