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maltatoday | SUNDAY • 3 MAY 2020 4 THIS WEEK ART The wide-ranging exhibition 'Malta. Land of Sea' represented the island at the BOZAR in Brussels while the EU Presidency was at its helm in 2017. Now that its catalogue gets the rare treat of a second edition, TEODOR RELJIC speaks to the exhibition's curator and the catalogue's editor Sandro Debono Of museums and necessary We are of course living in strange times, and the art world is now often called upon to soothe, reassure but also – as is often otherwise the case – to justify its existence once again as the world aggressively moves to distinguish the 'essential' from the 'non-essential'. As someone for whom the museum expe- rience is so central, what do you make of all this? Museums all over the world are faced with unprecedented difficulties, mostly financial but not just. Whether they re- main an essential part of contemporary societies is yet to be seen but the rapidity with which museums all over the world moved to a greater presence on social me- dia does speak for a museum sector that wants to be there and remain essential. It does not mean that a greater online pres- ence will tick all the right boxes. Indeed, those museums which stood out were the ones to think simple and not just digital – a good case study of a European museum I can flag is the Polin in Warsaw which chose to go for radio transmission. Another good example comes from the LAM museum in Amsterdam with the project 'Viewphone', through which mu- seum curators and educators reached out to their publics via telephone to present artworks from the museum collection. Some also went beyond in support of their communities. What may come across as a radical example is the case of the Bir- mingham museums which changed one of their museum shops into a food store at the service of their community. This reaching out will build bonds be- tween museums and their communities that will make these institutions essential and relevant in the medium to long term. I am not surprised with the lobby advo- cating the early re-opening of art muse- ums. Those behind this lobby, including BOZAR Centre of Fine Arts (Brussels) artistic director Paul Dujardin, make the point that societies need art much more than ever before. What will make the difference in the medium to long term, as far as relevance is concerned, is a greater awareness by museum staff, particularly noticeable in those areas of the world most hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, of the need to be more empathic towards and with their museum publics. Extensive retraining might be necessary as the new skillsets required for a post-COVID-19 cultural scene might be very different. The need for new skill sets is commonplace over a longer stretch of time, but the rate with which the situation has precipitated and the slow recovery envisaged makes things much more pressing. Malta. Land of Sea was the island's visual arts conduit with the sphere of its take-up of the EU Presidency in 2017. Looking back on it now, with not just the more immediate effects of the pan- demic to consider, but also Valletta's often 'festive' performance as European Capital of Culture in 2018, what do you think the exhibition continues to say about Malta's artistic heritage, and its next evolutionary steps forward? The exhibition chose to approach the discussion on Maltese identity through the dialectic between land and sea. Rath- er than going for a well-established chro- nology, or go by long-standing themes the project sought to consider Malta as an amalgam of land and sea, an extended territory of sedimentary rock and its sur- rounding sea. I remember touring David Abulafia, a scholar whom I greatly re- spect and admire, around the exhibition and listening to his positive comments about the innovative and thought pro- voking nature of the exhibition – he ac- tually wrote it down on my personal copy of the exhibition catalogue (first edition). The constant questioning, critical review, discussion and debate as to who we really are as a community, a nation and as indi- viduals living on an island at the centre of the Mediterranean can be taken forward through the material culture that shapes our history. Another point of consideration con- cerns the way we have structured our un- derstanding of Maltese history and identi- ty over time, oftentimes pigeon-boxed in response to colonial ambitions that have shaped and informed us over decades and centuries. This table of elements is not cast in stone. Indeed, this exhibition set out to highlight uniqueness in the very many ways our history connects and re- lates to the 'other'. It is a history that our colonial past has taught us to approach by exclusion and preference. It can be ap- proached by inclusion through a narrative woven from our very own perspective and point of view. I am not saying this has not Malta. Land of Sea took a sprawling sweep of the island's visual arts history, while acknowledging its inherent liminality. Photo credits: Martina Cutajar (above), BOZAR (overleaf, top-right)