ON THE EVOLUTION OF FONDAZZJONI PATRIMONJU MALTI ACROSS THREE DECADES
FPM
CELEBRATING THIRTY YEARS OF OUR COMMITMENT TO CULTURE
30 Published with the Summer 2022 issue of Treasures of Malta
YEARS OF
YEARS OF
YEARS OF
YEARS OF
COLLECTIONS
PLACES
RESEARCH
PEOPLE
From exhibition highlights to collectors’ remarks and the untold stories of curators >> p.4
An illustrated diary of hidden gems and public spaces engaged with for our projects >> p.24
On the flight of the publishing wing and the driving forces behind our publications >> p.46
From fond memories to the realities of working behind the scenes >> p.52
GIULIA PRIVITELLI
WHY CULTURE MATTERS
The mission of Fondazzjoni Patrimonju Malti is today as it was thirty years ago, committed to spreading awareness of the island’s heritage, locally and internationally. The idea still fuelling Patrimonju to this day started, perhaps more humbly, with the dream of making selected ‘hidden’ and largely unknown treasures in private collections available to the public—as an artefact glinting in the light or as a more lasting impression in a catalogue. Rita Flamini, the initial dreamer, understood that dreams quickly fade unless shared with others (enter, Maurice de Giorgio), and have little import on the ‘real’ world unless they provide an inspiration for others, waking them from the dreamy landscape of ideas into that of possibilities. Indeed, without the engagement of countless individuals invited at some point or other to participate in this ‘dream’ or longing, without the collectors, the supporters, the lenders, the scholars and researchers, the volunteers, professionals, artists, dedicated followers of the arts, and guardians—all, in a way, the makers—of our cultural heritage, that of Patrimonju would have been but a toddler’s fantasy, and the gap between dream and reality an impossible, impassable impasse.
1992—2022
Susan Stewart, in her book On Longing, traces a structure of desire rooted in the repetitious exercise of closing the gap that separates experience—be it dreamt, imagined or lived—and the language used to express it. Moreover, she explores this ‘gap’ in the context of the relation between the collectors and their
collection. The desire to bridge this gap, however, is not exclusive to the collector. It is one faced by the practitioner, the historian, restorer, cultural theorist, and anyone, really, engaged in the production of culture; it exists within every context that seeks to bridge, somehow, ideas and their expression, between
the material and the immaterial, the tangible and intangible, the determined and indetermined, the infinite and definite, the organic and the structured, thoughts and words, and so on. This gap manifests itself in what the artist creates as much as in what the archivist retrieves from continued on page 3...
