Re the rest of your post – very interesting. Hopefully something will be done about the Flemish tapestries. They deserve to be exhibited, one way or another.

Touché!

http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20081107/local/roll-call-of-leaders-at-st-aloysius

Let’s not start generalising about St Edward’s and St Aloysius, or we could start counting the high-profile criminals from St Edward’s!

[Daphne – We’ve already mentioned two of them, so relax.]

“Right, let’s see, you were at St Edward’s. No, I’m afraid that disqualifies you.”

Let’s put the matter differently. Who’d be your choice to replace Martin Galea?

@Gerald: Don’t you get tired carrying that chip around? The reason why you know so little about Martin Galea is that he doesn’t need the gutter press to publicise his work – which, I assure you, he does very well.

[Daphne – It was for a short festive period around St John’s Day. They can no longer be hung this way because the process of furling and unfurling causes damage in itself, and because they can no longer be exposed to heat, light and the deleterious breath of thousands of people. Hanging a new tapestry in this way is one thing, but now that they are centuries old, they can no longer be used for the purpose originally intended. Matter changes with age, as you very well know.]

Yes, I do….and I see. So if they were to be placed in a museum, would there still not be light, and would there still not be the breath of thousands of people? OK, I can understand that an underground chamber would have had tight environmental control. But light – surely there would be that.

I am not trying to be difficult – just asking.

[Daphne – I don’t think you’re being difficult. I realise these are genuine questions and I’m glad you’re trying to find out. Within a modern museum environment, textiles are trapped behind glass, either in ‘glass boxes’ or rows of glass cabinets along the walls. This protects them from pollutants in the air, to a certain extent. If the textiles are very precious – ancient robes, embroideries, and so on – the glass cabinets are highly sophisticated and allow for total environmental control. They are literally self-contained rarefied atmospheres. If they are priceless, they are kept in darkness, and when a visitor walks past, a sensor picks up the movement and briefly puts on a special sort of dim light for a minute or two, giving you just enough time to look. I don’t know how this would have been managed on the enormous scale of the St John’s museum, with so many visitors, and that is why I was eagerly awaiting this aspect of the proposal. I am very interested in these things. The reason why you are not allowed to take photographs of certain exhibits in museums is not to protect the museum’s interests, but because the brief burst of intensely bright light is extremely deleterious. Cameras are now very sophisticated and you can take pictures without using a flash, so many museums allow this.]

When I was young, the Perellos tapestries were hung in the Cathedral itself for a time – I forget what the occasion was, precisely. They looked totally magnificent, mostly because that is where they were meant to be displayed. [Daphne – It was for a short festive period around St John’s Day. They can no longer be hung this way because the process of furling and unfurling causes damage in itself, and because they can no longer be exposed to heat, light and the deleterious breath of thousands of people. Hanging a new tapestry in this way is one thing, but now that they are centuries old, they can no longer be used for the purpose originally intended. Matter changes with age, as you very well know.]

Al over Europe, such tapestries are hung in the very buildings which they were meant to embellish. Why can’t this be the case with the cathedral tapestries in Malta? [Daphne – Not true. It’s because the cathedral gets hundreds of thousands of visitors every year, polluting the air with their breath. And because the cathedral must be properly lit, and that amount of light would cause them further damage. And because the temperature in a cathedral cannot be controlled, whether or not you have hundreds of thousands of visitors. And because time changes the consistency of textiles, weakening them in a way that ensures after centuries they cannot be used for the purpose first intended.]

Re the Chapel of Bones: whoever is calling for it to be rebuilt is being ridiculous.

Eh? Please.

I agree completely, for a change…