Museum Typologies and Public Aspiration: Heritage, Architecture, Contemporary Art, and the Small-State Condition
The MICAS International Symposium is conceived as a focused two-day research event, bringing together architects, architectural historians, curators, museologists, and sociologists to examine how contemporary art institutions emerge within historically layered environments, with particular attention to the relationship between architecture, museum formation, and public cultural presence. In small island and small-state contexts, public aspiration places specific demands on cultural institutions and their architectural form. Taking place at MICAS, Malta International Contemporary Art Space, the symposium draws on this and other institutional examples to consider how these demands are negotiated in practice, and how architecture engages existing spatial and material structures to produce new forms of institutional and cultural presence. The programme moves from the structural forces shaping such institutions, through questions of formation and architectural intervention, to the curatorial negotiation of historically layered sites and the role of practice in giving form to spaces for contemporary art.
Alongside these institutional questions, the symposium engages with broader questions of architectural practice — about the conditions under which architecture responds to the specific character of existing places, and about where, in the current moment, the conditions for genuine architectural experimentation are most likely to be found.
These discussions are anchored locally through an architectural walkthrough of the site led by the project architects and brought into focus through moderated discussion and a concludingresearch roundtable.
Programme
Moderated by Vicky Richardson —Curator, Writer and Director, Pick Up Architecture
The full Symposium Programme can be downloaded from here.
| Day 1 MICAS: Malta International Contemporary Art Space Structural Conditions, Institutions & Architectural Intervention | |
| 08:30 – 09:00 | Registration & Coffee |
| 09:00 – 09:10 | Opening Remarks |
| 09:10 – 09:55 | Godfrey Baldacchino – Professor of Sociology, University of Malta |
| 09:55 – 10.15 | Coffee Break |
| 10:15 – 11:15 | Dominique Poulot — Professor Emeritus, historian of museums and cultural heritage, Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne |
| 11:15 – 11:35 | Dr. Georgina Portelli – Vice-Chair and Chair of the Education Committee, MICAS |
| 11:35 – 12:45 | Lunch |
| 12:45 – 13:45 | Francesco Dal Co – Professor Emeritus, architectural historian, critic, and longstanding editor of Casabella, IUAV Venice |
| 13:45 – 15:30 | Architectural walkthrough: MICAS in Situ Walkthrough Orientation by Marco Mulazzani – Professor of the History of Architecture, University of Ferrara. Architectural Walkthrough by Carlo Terpolilli – Professor of Architectural Design, University of Florence; founding partner, Ipostudio Architects; architect of the MICAS galleries |
| 15:30 – 16:00 | Closing Remarks |
| Day 2 Architecture and the Contemporary Art Museum | |
| 08:30 – 09:00 | Arrival Coffee |
| 09:00 – 10:00 | Alina Payne, Professor of History of Art and Architecture, Harvard University; Paul E. Geier Director of Villa I Tatti, Florence |
| 10:00 – 10:20 | Coffee Break |
| 10:20– 10:40 | Edith Devaney – Artistic Director, MICAS |
| 10:40 – 11:40 | Adam Caruso – Professor of Architecture and Construction, ETH Zürich; founding partner, Caruso St John Architects |
| 11:40 – 13:00 | Lunch |
| 13:00 – 14:30 | Vicky Richardson Moderated Synthesis Roundtable Architecture, institution, and public aspiration in dialogue – bringing the perspectives of all speakers into open critical conversation across the two days |
| 14:30 – 15:00 | Closing Remarks |
The full Symposium Programme can be downloaded from here.
