Sandro Debono Ph.D. (Lond.) is a museum thinker and change-maker active at the intersection of academia and practice.
He has held various posts with Maltese cultural heritage institutions including the former Museums Department, the Superintendence of Cultural Heritage and Heritage Malta. His major project so far has been the rethink of the National Museum of Fine Arts into MUŻA, a national-community art museum originally conceived with a bespoke vision and a bottom-up museological framework.
During his tenure as Senior Curator at the National Museum of Fine Arts, now MUŻA, he also curated major international exhibitions including the first-ever exhibition in Malta entirely dedicated to Mattia Preti (Mattia Preti - Faith and Humanity, 2013), the main exhibition celebrating the presidency of the council of ministers of the European Union (Malta - Land of Sea, 2017) and an exhibition of Malta maps at Palazzo Vecchio in Florence ( Valletta - Capitale d’Europa, 2018).
He read for his undergraduate and masters degrees in art history at the University of Malta followed by a Ph.D. in heritage policy and collections development at University College (London) on the subject of the Malta national collection of paintings and sculpture as a visualization of identity.
Dr. Debono sits on the international advisory board of the Anchorage Museum in Alaska and regularly contributes to training programs and museum studies courses organised from time to time by Italian museums, universities, private organizations, and the Fondazione Scuola Beni Attivita Culturali of the Italian Government.
