Malta’s New MICAS Contemporary Art Museum Dazzles

The announcement of a new art museum opening is always great news. It’s always even more exciting when the institution in question is set in a bold and dramatic spot and has curatorial oomph behind it. Opened just last fall in Malta’s capital of Valletta, MICAS—Malta International Contemporary Arts Space—is literally built into and hovers over the historic limestone bastions that date back to the Knights of St. John and the city’s establishment after the 1565 Great Siege of Malta.

At first, it doesn’t seem an auspicious journey outside the main city gates here as you head through a parking zone to the waterfront of Marsamxett Harbour, the northern of the two huge natural harbors spliced by the Sciberras Peninsula upon which Valletta was built. It’s a bit confusing on first try with a lot of stone and a lot of high walls all around you as you approach the San Salvatore Counterguard portion of city fortifications. But then you hit a nice new smooth esplanade.

At the end of the esplanade, a shiny-glass, vaguely Bauhaus-shaped exterior appears. Seem from higher bastions, the MICAS rooftop almost looks like a sea of solar panels. The $30 million federally- and EU-funded project was designed by Florence-based Ipostudio.

Inside, MICAS is far larger than you’d ever imagine, with four levels built off-kilter such that their full height is not apparent from any given spot you’re standing in. It’s a lot of glass and steel over 15,000 square feet of galleries, all under the familiar checkerboard of a coffered ceiling.

A Stunning Debut

The MICAS opening exhibit Joana Vasconcelos: Transcending the Domestic (through March 27, 2025) is simply stunning. You would have already seen the Portuguese artist’s work on the esplanade coming in; the fun and funky sculpture Solitaire (2024) is a huge diamond engagement ring made of shot glasses atop what appear to be gold wheel rims. It’s a hit.

In the first gallery space, visitors can get right up and personal with her work by walking under the suspended Valkyrie Mumbet (2020), an inflated installation of bright African textiles and intricate Portuguese lace and crochet work. The title is in reference to an 18th-century enslaved Massachusetts woman known as Mumbet who sued to gain her freedom. For all its immediate visual gaiety, its quirky octopus-like tentacles spreading out, the complex work as a whole also speaks to Portugal’s history in the transatlantic slave trade.

Starting from a lower-level MICAS space, Vasconcelos’s mesmerizing Tree of Life consists of no fewer than 100,000 crocheted, knitted and embroidered flowers applied to a tree that soars 42 feet high. It’s huge and imposing and dainty at the same time. And, yes, it’s yet another hit of the show.

As you follow a meandering path in a darkened gallery through the Vasconcelos installation The Garden of Eden (2007–24), you’re surrounded by copious flowers all lit up and blinking. They’re thoroughly artificial and, yet, as the work’s title promises, the scene can be serene.

For such a small capital city, Valletta already had more museums and fine art displays than you’d ever guess. St. John’s Co-Cathedral alone is worth the trip, not least for The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist, one of Caravaggio’s most stunning works. A floor above the painting, a wonderfully executed video tutorial analyzes techniques on just how that mad genius painted. The new MICAS nicely fills a gap now between Old Masters and new ones to come.

Bringing New Life To Old Walls

As for the MICAS setting, a little background goes a long way toward further appreciating all those old fortifications surrounding you whose spatial elements are all dizzying for a newcomer. The museum is built on the San Salvatore Counterguard, which in turn is part of the Floriana Lines that were the second line of defense outside of Valletta—the name Floriana is also that of the suburb you are in and comes from the Italian military engineer Pietro Paolo Floriani who was responsible for it all. The museum site held a 17th-century gunpowder mill and in later centuries served as the Ospizio complex, a hospice for the destitute and mentally ill patients.

Just below MICAS, the Hay Wharf naval base lies on Marsamxett Harbour, while further inside the harbor a marina is full of leisure craft. The whole area is also nicely rich in green space and civic botanic gardens on this mostly rocky peninsula. In the Sa Maison gardens down below, grandees of past centuries would stroll. The Msida Bastion Historic Garden is an early-19th-century British Protestant cemetery in this heavily Catholic country. For its part, MICAS will be adding a Sculpture Garden on its open counterguard space that lies just beyond the rooftop.

Formerly forlorn waterfronts around the world are getting makeovers, and returning to public use and enjoyment. Expect MICAS to draw plenty of newcomers down to this part of Marsamxett Harbour. It may not become a Brooklyn DUMBO level of mega-revitalization, but you don’t really want all that either, do you.

Notes: The MICAS gift shop may be tiny, but it’s got wonderful ceramic and porcelain wares, books and fine pieces by jewelry maker Tara Lois.

Future MICAS shows will include Milton Avery and His Influence on Contemporary Art (October 2025); Malta in Focus showing half a dozen island artists (May, 2025–August, 2025); and, the solo exhibition Reggie Burrows Hodges on the career of the African-American painter (February to June 2026). Museum entry is free.

Read here for a post on other military-related historic sites to visit in Malta.