National Museum of Fine Arts closing its doors at the Admiralty House on 2nd October

Masterpiece of Boulogne to be exhibited in New York and Paris

The National Museum of Fine Arts at South Street shall be closing its doors for the last time on Sunday 2 October 2016 after 42 years. This is the last month for the museum at this venue, also known as Admiralty House due to its use during the British colonial period as official residence of the British Admiral of the Mediterranean Fleet. Works on the new museum at the new venue at the Auberge d’Italie, and the collection to go on display there, continue according to plans. MUZA, the new national community art museum, shall reopen at its designated new venue in 2018 when Valletta will be declared European Capital of Culture.  

In the meantime, one of the masterpieces in the collection shall be travelling to New York and Paris to prominently feature in a major retrospective exhibition entitled ‘Valentin de Boulogne: Beyond Caravaggio‘. ‘Judith and Holofernes’ by the French seventeenth century artist, Valentin de Boulogne (1591-1632), shall be on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, as from this coming 7 October until 16 January 2017. It shall then travel to the Louvre, Paris, where it shall go on display between 20 February and 22 May 2017 also to coincide with the Maltese Presidency of the Council of the European Union (January to June 2017).

This is an exceptional loan from the museum collection which was, incidentally, also loaned to the previous and last international exhibition about the French followers of Caravaggio, including Valentin de Boulogne, held at the French Academy, Rome and the Grand Palais, Paris in 1973.