During these last three decades, Giuseppe Schembri Bonaci established, organised, and coordinated the Modern and Contemporary Art programme within the Art and Art History Department at the University of Malta. He was also the founder of the Fine Arts programme within the same department. He has published nearly a hundred books and essays on art, history of art, philosophy of art, art theory, comparative art studies, and methodology. Schembri Bonaci organised and convened a milestone conference at the Warburg Institute (University of London), placing Maltese scholarship within the international debate on artistic development. He established significant scholarly links with the Victoria & Albert Museum (London), the Royal Academy of Arts (London), the State University of Milan (History of Art Department), the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, the Sofia Academy of Fine Arts, and other notable institutions. Schembri Bonaci was also the artistic director of the Strada Stretta Concept (Valletta Cultural Agency). He is artistic director of the APS Mdina Cathedral Contemporary Art Biennale, now entering into its fifth edition.

His research and scholarly work led him to wander through multi-cultural spaces, including aboriginal Australia, wherein he established important links binding so-called prehistoric art with modernity and contemporaneity. Having specialised in the study of Mediterranean modern art for several years, he founded the ‘Changing Gear’ research programme which dealt with multi-levelled and comparative research into such a complex and complicated subject. This first volume is a result of such research.

Besides expertise in art history and philosophy, Schembri Bonaci is also a specialist in philosophy of law, with a particular interest in the theory and philosophy of international law and international relations. He worked in the diplomatic service in Moscow during Malta’s most turbulent times in recent history. As Malta’s chargé d’affaires at ambassadorial level for eight years, he was in a unique position to gauge the radical changes of the 1980s and 90s that forever changed the global map.