Over the years, I have often been criticised for writing articles or letters in which I emphasised my role in some particular project undertaken in the past. I have often had to do this because in this small country of ours, one of the major pastimes among professionals is plagiarism. A number of projects that are proposed in this country are based on the erroneous presumption that people forget easily and that as such there is nothing wrong with lifting someone else’s idea and making it your own. If someone reacts and points out that he had written about and worked on a similar proposal in the past, that person is accused of boasting!

There is absolutely nothing wrong in reviving an idea someone else had come up with in the past, but we must have the decency to record what others before us have done. The latest such plagiarism is the idea being floated for a Valletta Art Museum at the old market.

The proposal to turn the market in Valletta, Is-Suq, into a Museum for Contemporary Art had been put forward by myself when I was still responsible for Valletta around 10 years ago. At the time, Heritage Malta was thinking of converting a house in Old Mint Street for this purpose and connecting it to the National Museum of Fine Arts. I had always stated that this building, while a welcome extension to our Museum of Fine Arts, was not big enough to house the extensive works of art that are hidden away due to lack of exhibition space. Furthermore, modern art needs large spaces.

I grew up in the area close to the Valletta market. It was not easy for me to come up with this proposal, mainly because a number of families, a number which is growing ever smaller, still earn their living from their shops in the market.

But it is a known fact that the market had started on a tremendous downward spiral years ago. When the food market returned there in 1987, after years of absence, it never regained its former popularity. The modernisations carried in the late 1980s harmed rather than helped the building.  

We are fortunate, however, to still have the building’s original cast iron structure. The modern accretions could be removed without any damage to the original fabric. My hope has therefore always been that a solution would be found for the few shops still operating from the premises (Valletta is full of small shops that have been shut down) and the building transformed into a Museum of Contemporary and Performing Arts. My idea was to see the building have permanent and temporary exhibitions, a small theatrical space, a library and a cafeteria. Valletta needs more cultural spaces.

It was for this reason that at the time I had commissioned a very active and intelligent Italian intern, an architect by profession, Anna Maria Gallo, to draw up such a proposal. She worked extremely hard at the commission and the results she produced, modified time and again after many discussions, including those with major artists in Malta, were outstanding. We had in our hands a complete project that we could have embarked on the following day had we so wished. At the time however, there was very little backing for the proposal.

Anna Maria Gallo continued to develop her proposal and received recognition for her work, even in Italy. She eventually settled in Malta. When a few years back a discussion started, especially after the death of the much loved Denis Vella, about the need for such a museum, I again wrote extensively, even in this newspaper, about the idea. Anyone can check The Malta Independent archives to find my article on the subject.

I know that the government has recently revisited this proposal, although for a different type of museum. Suddenly, I find that Chris Briffa Architects has “after over a year of collaborative research and design” (STOM, 11 March) come up with a “proposal whereby the old Valletta Market… is rehabilitated into an art museum”. The Malta Arts Fund (apparently ignorant of what the government is proposing for the site) has also invested in this idea. I have no problem with someone taking such an initiative today, but why is it that we always have to present something as if it is a completely new idea when the idea has been around and written about for the past 10 years? Why do we have to ignore what has already been proposed and present it as a bright new idea? Is this not a lack of professional ethics? If an architect has already worked on the same project, must we not surely mention that?

This is a country that needs ideas but more than anything else we need to collaborate. There is so much that can be done, and so much that can be done better, through better professional ethics and collaboration.

Ray Bondin