Former museums' director Fr Marius Zerafa OP has donated two art works to the national collection managed by Heritage Malta.

Fr Zerafa made the donation as a sign of gratitude for the 20 “happy and fruitful” years he spent at the department, where he was responsible, among other things, for the setting up of the National Museum of Fine Arts and a number of other museums.

The artworks will be part of Muża, Heritage Malta’s National-Community Art Museum at Auberge d’Italie in Valletta.

The works are by renowned Maltese artists Gabriel Caruana and Edward Pirotta. The glazed ceramic crucifix, by Gabriel Caruana, was presented to Fr Zerafa on the day of his retirement from the department in 1989, and the

bust of himself by the sculptor Edward Pirotta, was one of the sculptor’s works which helped him win a scholarship to further his studies at the Academia di Belle Arti in Rome in the late 1950s. The portrait was later presented by the artist to Fr Zerafa.

This is the second donation by Fr Zerafa, who in September 2015 donated two other works of art by the renowned Maltese artists Antonio Sciortino and Giuseppe Cali.