The economic dimension of culture

Rumours are rife about impending changes of some higher echelons in arts management. This ominous gossip comes on top of a confusing explosion of opposed views on relations between culture and economics in the press involving several protagonists in this sphere. Have you any knowledge or particular insights on the matter?

The playing of the Philharmonic Orchestra has lately become sensitive enough for echoes of any internal uncertainty that affected its members to be audible in the sound produced at concerts.

From my point of view, the serious economic problem that has arisen in the wake of the expansion from 40 to 65 musicians seems to call for an obvious solution. Some of these excellent performers should also be engaged in providing much needed teaching in the time that they have free of actual orchestral commitments. Provision of such services to the Johan Strauss School of Music, where they are very much needed, would deserve additional income for the orchestra.

When the proposal to set up an Academy of Music was being developed, the idea had been that the orchestra and the University should jointly recruit staff who would have both performing and teaching duties. The academy had been placed as top priority among the cultural needs of the island in the very thorough survey that was carried out by the Council for Culture and Arts upon its constitution. The necessary funds were not provided by the government from European sources, apparently because it was not perceived that the academy was an essential condition to enable Malta to project itself as a prime cultural tourism destination.

I still fervently hope that Dolores Cristina will manage to persuade her colleagues of what should be a fairly evident truth. Her tenure as Minister of Culture would remain memorable, among other things, by the establishment of the Academy of Music.

Last Friday, you took part, in absentia, in the launching of a new book by Mario Buhagiar which, incidentally, highlights the economic sagacity of the Knights of Malta in their investments in art. How important do you think such lessons from history are?

Prof. Buhagiar's book, Essays on the Knights and Art and Architecture in Malta 1500-1798, does not allow anyone to think perhaps that the incalculably profitable investment in Art made by the Knights was only in Caravaggio.

It is we today, in our culpable ignorance not only of the intrinsic worth of masterpieces that we have inherited but also of current waves of rising interest in them, who do not appreciate for instance the significance of the Guido Reni painting of the Risen Christ, now at the National Museum of Fine Arts in Valletta, where it was transferred from the Grandmaster's Palace.

Incidentally, now that it has been sensibly decided to turn the whole of this palace into essentially an art museum, it may be a good idea to transfer back the bulk of the collection at present in the Museum of Fine Arts to the Palace from where it originated. The rest of the collection could also be moved there, since experience shows that it does not have a magnet strong enough, on its own, to draw visitors in large numbers. Space also needs to be found for contemporary art which can draw a different public.

Prof. Buhagiar's book can serve very well as a general introduction to Malta's Baroque identity looked at in a curiously post-modernist way.

This comes about because it is actually a collection of 20 essays written over a span of 40 years. Practically the whole of the art and architecture of Malta of the time of the Knights is critically surveyed, but in segments determined by the adoption in different chapters of multiple perspectives - for instance, relations between France or Portugal and Malta, patronage in Gozo, the vernacular complements and the Byzantine legacies, and so on.

A major strength of the book is precisely that it places art history in the context of the political and economic contexts which both conditioned its genesis but were in turn conditioned by its creative force and innovatory effects.

Prof. Buhagiar combines both the priority that historians have learnt from Fernard Braudel to give to such long lasting factors as geography and what he calls "the ground swells" of history, together with the renewed attention to decisive personalities and events given by recent historiographers such as Roger Crowley in his recently published book Empires of the Sea: The Siege of Malta, the Battle of Lepanto and the Contest for the Centre of the World.

There could hardly be a more potent demonstration of the importance of history in seeking to answer the perennial question - who am I? - than a book such as Prof. Buhagiar's. I hope that curriculum drafters will notice it.

Is there any other issue of culture-economy relations in need of urgent attention?

I consider it very important for the government to realise the economic possibilities there are in a revamping of Carnival right now with the recuperation of Fort St Elmo from the admittedly highly colourful squatters that had established themselves within it for years.

The preparatory activities for Carnival and memoirs of past Carnivals would undoubtedly provide a major tourist attraction throughout the year. It should be remembered that Malta's leading artists such as Gabriel Caruana and Antoine Camilleri used to design for Carnival and I am sure today's generation would do the same if given the opportunity.

The whole management and economic dimension of Carnival needs an immediate and broad vision response from the government that cherishes the cultural history of our country.

Fr Peter Serracino Inglott was talking to Miriam Vincenti.