Dr. Debby Hershman is an archaeologist and anthropologist, a curator in senior positions in leading museums in Israel. Currently Deputy Director and Chief Curator-at-large at the MUSA – Eretz Israel Museum, Tel Aviv (2016 - onwards); formerly Senior Curator of Ancient Cultures at the Israel Museum, Jerusalem (1996-2016), and Curator in Chief of the Tower of David Museum, Jerusalem (1990-1996). She combines professional practice with academic research. Her publications and exhibitions concentrate on the field of her expertise – Prehistoric and Ancient religious art. She curated a number of groundbreaking exhibitions such as Local Goddesses – From Ancient Goddesses to Today’s Mythological Women (1994), The First Artists (1997), In the Beginning: the Origins of Myth (2005), and Face to Face: The Oldest Masks in the World – highlighted as one of the Top Best exhibitions of 2014 by the prestigious international edition of The Art Newspaper. The latter was the culmination of ten years of research into an extremely rare group of Neolithic stone masks, created in the Land of Israel 9,000 years ago. Scattered around the globe, these enigmatic masks were brought back to their homeland for further study and a unique encounter 'face to face' with the world's earliest human portraits. In parallel to her work in Israeli museums, Dr. Hershman is a senior consultant in international projects for the preservation of cultural heritage worldwide.