In his article titled ‘Women breaking the glass ceiling’ (June 30), John Cassar White starts off with the statement “while most women are increasingly asserting themselves in the workplace, much remains to be done to achieve parity with men in getting rewarded for their commitment and competence in their chosen careers”.
Cassar White can easily act on this assertion within the very confines of the bank he leads, by making sure that the next BOV Retrospective Exhibition will be dedicated to a number of outstanding women artists to honour them “for their commitment and competence in their chosen careers”. For some obscure and unfortunate reason, the bank never featured a female artist in this important series of exhibitions.
Judging by the last exhibition, it seems the list of great male artists who deserve such a tribute is close to being exhausted.
Therefore, I feel it is high time that the bank finally decides to feature the first woman artist. This should be done not out of fairness or gender parity but because there are a number of women artists out there who truly deserve to be celebrated.
When Bank of Valletta launched this prestigious series in 1999, its rationale was to give tribute to those living artists who gave an important contribution to the development of Maltese contemporary art. An exception was made once, with Esprit Barthet’s exhibition. An exception can, of course, be made again.
Therefore, I would suggest to the bank to consider featuring the late Isabelle Borg as the first female artist in this series. Isabelle sadly passed away in 2010. Hosting a retrospective of her works in 2015, on the fifth anniversary of her demise, would be a proper tribute. It would hopefully also help inject some renewed enthusiasm in this important series.
A myriad of other female artists then come to mind: Josette Caruana, Jessica Debattista, Madeleine Gera, Anna Grima, Celia Borg Cardona. The list is long and valid enough to break the artistic ‘glass ceiling’, at least the one inside BOV’s imposing lobby.