Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1535957
maltatoday | SUNDAY • 1 JUNE 2025 7 INTERVIEW The following are excerpts from the interview. The full interview can be found on maltatoday.com.mt as well as our Facebook and Spotify pages. PHOTOS: JAMES BIANCHI / MALTA TODAY You spent many years work- ing at the Royal Academy of Art in London and you also have a long-standing rela- tionship with David Hock- ney. What was it about this project that made you want to come on board? I was introduced to chairperson Phyllis Muscat through a mutual friend, who told me she's doing this extraordinary thing in Malta. I met her soon after that. She had just started managing this whole project and I became very interested. The idea of a start-up, not-for-profit museum is so unusual in the art world that I was fascinated by it. I became involved in a very small way, coming over to do talks and get involved in things. I kept a watch on what they were doing and continued to be in contact with the team here. Eventually, the idea of becoming fully involved… I couldn't resist it anymore. I thought, what an opportunity for anyone. How will MICAS bring more artists to the international contemporary art scene? The only way that we can really get the attention of the international art world is to put on exhibitions of excellence. It's the only way to do it; there's no other fast track. Before we opened, we announced the programme for the first two years and now we're working on the next two. It has to have consistent excellence and I think we have to really make a noise. We're geographically distant from what may be considered the centre of the arts. I mean, I don't really buy that anymore, that Paris or London or New York is the centre of the arts. I think it's much more than that. It's much more spread across the rest of the world. But for us to find our place, for us to have a voice there, we have to have those consistent exhibitions. It will be expected of us that we celebrate where we are in these exhibitions and that we present Maltese artists who have already got that international focus in their work. There is no fixed collection at the museum. There will be rotating exhibitions over the years. How do you think people will see this? I think it will be well-received because it's ever-changing. The thing about a permanent collection, and having only a permanent collection, is that once you've seen it, you're done. What we want to do is to have a much more vibrant and continuous engagement with what's happening in contemporary art. There's always that problem with contemporary art as well. Take the MoMA, which was established in the 1930s in New York by Alfred Barr. At what stage does the contemporary art that he bought then stop being contemporary? At some stage, you realise that it's becoming modernist art. What we want to do here is to keep that sense of vibrancy and change by not having a collection. That gives you enormous freedom because you can respond to all the different trends and impulses that are happening across the art world. Contemporary art is so rooted in social change. The art changes because artists respond to it in a very particular way. I think that's what will keep us current and relevant. Do you imagine this museum going beyond the visual arts and expanding into, say, dance or music, or is this not in its remit right now? It's not in our remit. Of course, contemporary art is wide. The idea of digital art or sound-based art and installation and performance art… all of that's possible. Absolutely. We're looking at all of these things.