The Malta Maritime Museum: Navigating National Identity in Mediterranean Waters

ABSTRACT This article examines how the Malta Maritime Museum (MMM) utilizes a temporary, prototyping exhibition, An Island at the Crossroads (February 2024–May 2025), to explore the island's maritime history as a driving force in shaping national identity. Located at the crossroads of Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, Malta's maritime past reflects millennia of cultural exchange, as well as periods of foreign rule and the silences these produce. Working within a poststructuralist frame and using narrative and thematic analysis alongside cultural cartography, the article demonstrates how the MMM situates nationhood narratives within current debates in heritage politics, including the roles of museums in addressing migration, displacement, and cultural diversity in a maritime, multi‐directional Mediterranean context. It also considers the governance value of the exhibition's preview/prototyping status, how iterative formats and sequencing are used to test approaches to sensitive content. The article concludes that An Island at the Crossroads signifies a meaningful (though partial) shift: it introduces new formats, voices, and interpretive angles that point towards a more plural and reflexive negotiation of national identity, while still retaining certain nation‐centered perspectives, underscoring the challenges of engaging complex histories in contemporary museum practice.