Catherine Tabone

CEO, Valletta Cultural Agency

Tradition, Innovation, Consolidation: this is the threepronged paradigm on which the ethos of the Valletta Cultural Agency rests. As a Government agency, the VCA is responsible for facilitating the promulgation of art in all its forms and shapes. Whatever the project, the VCA is at the service of art, at striving to achieve ever higher levels of excellence, at giving its patrons the best cultural and educational experience. The varied programme we devise each year attests to this and we are immensely proud that we are attracting the best artists, both local and international, to share their experiences with us. It is not only important to introduce new artistic endeavour, new modes of thinking, but it is also vital that we consolidate what we know, that we help in reconfiguring our knowledge in order for it to mean differently in a different context, at translating the ephemeral into the enduring. As CEO of the Valletta Cultural Agency, I am always looking for new ways to consolidate the old. As T.S. Eliot puts it, ‘Tradition cannot mean standing still’; it needs to be constantly rethought and revised, and only an ‘awareness of history will make the past contemporary’. I feel that Antoine Farrugia is the perfect exemplar of this combination of tradition, innovation and consolidation. He needs no introduction: he is certainly a prime mover when it comes to working in limestone. In his hands, the steadfast limestone yields to the contours of the shapes he gently suggests to it: it twists and curls, stretches and contorts, almost in a distinctly human attempt at taking on a life of its own. It is innovation, of course, but it is also a consolidation of ancient traditions that have given us the most sublime works of art. It is, simply put, an act of love.