Flagship contemporary arts museum MICAS opens with grandiose Vasconcelos exhibition

Malta’s first ever national contemporary arts museum – the Malta International Contemporary Arts Space (MICAS) – was inaugurated on Friday 25th October 2024 with a monumental exhibition from the acclaimed and visionary Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos.

MICAS was officially opened by Prime Minister Robert Abela together with Joana Vasconcelos, as well as Minister for National Heritage, Arts and Local Government Owen Bonnici, and the MICAS board, led by executive chairperson Phyllis Muscat.

MICAS will be open to the public on Sunday, 27th October.

MICAS executive chair Phyllis Muscat

Special guests at the official inauguration cast their eyes on three major works of Joana Vasconcelos – Tree Of Life, Garden of Eden, and Valkyrie Mumbet – as well as a series of other works, which literally took over the four-storey space at MICAS.

Guests also admired the architectural intervention at the 17th century fortification formerly housed the Knights-era Ospizio, now enveloped under an iconic grid of steel beams that brings together the San Salvatore Counterguard, the Barbara skewed arch, and the La Vitoria Bastion.

Together with the entire MICAS forecourt, the restoration of auxiliary buildings, the restoration of the bastions, the artists' residences and the sculpture garden, the project was a €23 million state investment, bolstered by over €9 million in ERDF funding.

Prime Minister Robert Abela said the opening of MICAS was a transformative moment for the island-nation of Malta, and paid tribute to all the ideators and workers who had brought the concept to fruition.

“MICAS symbolises the collective progress of this country, and now I believe it is part of the quality leap we have achieved in these last years, with a cultural platform for art, that sends out our message of faith in artists, who will document our history with their work,” Abela said.

Spin (Photo: James Bianchi)

The Tree Of Life (Photo: James Bianchi)

Garden of Eden (Photo: James Bianchi)

Euro-Visau (Photo: James Bianchi)

Valkyrie Mumbet (Photo: James Bianchi)

“Thanks to this progress, Malta can truly be a centre for artistic creativity in the Mediterranean, and a natural home for artists.”

MICAS executive chair Phyllis Muscat outlined the evolution of a concept, which was formally kick-started in 2018, to respond to decades-long calls by Maltese artists for a contemporary arts space, and paid tribute to the efforts of the MICAS board in reaching out to the world of international art.

“It was a challenge for us to present what was essentially a start-up, with no history or a completed building, and from a small nation to boot… our enthusiasm pushed us to develop this concept and build up interest in the circles of international art, and we achieved this concretely through the networks we built with international artists, curators, museums, foundations and art historians, and the acquisitions we made.”

The artist Joana Vasconcelos gave thanks to the MICAS board for inviting her to open Malta’s newest contemporary arts museum and paid tribute to the MICAS board.

“I’m really proud of Phyllis Muscat: what we are doing tonight is truly incredible…

“It is very rare and unique for an artist to be asked to open a museum. Here I found the temples, the Mediterranean Sea, wonderful food and architecture… so from the bottom of my Portuguese heart, I will never forget you - I can never be grateful enough for this opportunity for having worked with these people.”

MICAS's Artistic Director, Edith Devaney (Photo: James Bianchi)

Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos (Photo: James Bianchi)

Minister for National Heritage and the Arts Owen Bonnici toasted the historic moment, in which 4,000sq.m of previously inaccessible land was being returned to the community in the form of a cultural infrastructure project. “It is a strong investment in the people’s well-being, families, and our quality of life… art not only beautifies and feeds our souls, but it strengthens the nation. A future without culture would be a future without humanity.”

The director-general of the Department for Restoration and Preservation, architect Norbert Gatt, said a large dose of determination “and perhaps also faith”, was needed for MICAS to come alive in the site of the former Ospizio. “We were convinced this was a unique canvass for the MICAS galleries, where history and contemporary art could come together. IPOstudio’s solution of a steel roof enveloping the site, gave it this continuum between past, present and future.”

Guests at the MICAS inauguration took their seats at the foot of Vasconcelos’s Solitaire – a creation which reproduces a diamond ring on a monumental scale, made up of 110 golden car rims and crowned by an inverted pyramid composed of 1,450 crystal whisky glasses.

At the end of the speeches, the Prime Minister and Joana Vasconcelos later made their way through the MICAS esplanade and to the Galleries, where together with Phyllis Muscat, officially declared MICAS open to the public, with a fireworks display crowning off the official ceremony.

Viewers at MICAS’s ground-floor were greeted by Valkyrie Mumbet, which honours Elizabeth “Mum Bett” Freeman, an enslaved woman whose court battle for her freedom in 1781 helped make slavery illegal in Massachusetts. The large-scale installation is part of Vasconcelos’s Valkyries series, named after Norse female war goddesses, which pays homage to inspiring women.

Also immediately visible at the lowest level, was the towering Tree Of Life, with its 110,000 hand-stitched and embroidered fabric leaves, fungi, mosses and lichens, stumps and branches, bringing to life the immense spaciousness of MICAS’s raw and restrained interior. A musical composition specifically created for Tree Of Life was sung by the baritone Rui de Luna Vasconcelos, who also sang other works in the Portuguese tradition.

Other works exhibited at MICAS, which opens to the public in November, are The Garden of Eden, Loft, Vista Interior, Aspirin Sofa, Euro-Visão [Euro-Vision], Valletta, and Spin.