2010
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Anonymous, Portrait of a Lady with Headdress and a Fur Collar, 1639
LDUCS-4758 UCL Art Museum
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Henry Tonks, Study for Wilkins and Three Head Studies
LDUCS-2752 UCL Art Museum
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Caroline Watson, Sir Joshua Reynolds P.R.A. (after Joshua Reynolds), 1789
LDUCS-2546 UCL Art Museum
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Rembrandt van Rijn, Rembrandt and his Wife Saskia: Busts, 1636
LDUCS-1694 UCL Art Museum
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Jesse Dale Cast, Study for Maud in the Austrian Hat
LDUCS-9562 UCL Art Museum
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Willem Hondius, Frans Francken, The Younger, Painter (after Anthony van Dyck)
LDUCS-532 UCL Art Museum
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Isaac Rosenberg, Clare Winsten, 1916
LDUCS-5653 UCL Art Museum
What does 'likeness' actually mean? How do new technologies shape innovation in the arts and humanities?
UCL Museums and Collections was awarded a grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) in 2010 to develop a series of three interdisciplinary research workshops to investigate Likeness and Facial Recognition. The representation and interpretation of facial appearance is an important area for research in both the humanities and the biomedical and life sciences. These workshops brought researchers in the arts, humanities, social sciences and life sciences from UCL and other HE institutions together with museum professionals and contemporary artists to investigate the historical context for our understanding of ‘likeness’ in portraiture and medical images of the face, and the potential of new research on facial recognition to inform work in the arts and humanities. The research network investigated the ways in which digital and surgical techniques are creating new models of ‘likeness’ for the 21st-century, the synergies and dissonances of these models with the historical definitions of ‘likeness’ in portraiture, and the ways that contemporary artists are engaging with these ideas and technologies. In addition to these themes, the workshops were also used to explore models of communication between researchers from the fine arts, the humanities and the sciences.
This projected enabled the creation of 100 Faces teaching pack. To learn more about get in touch at museums@ucl.ac.uk
PROJECT PARTNERS
Principal investigator: Dr Emma Chambers, UCL Art Museum
Research project assistant: Krisztina Lackoi, UCL Art Museum
Advisory Board:
Dr Suzannah Biernoff, Department of History of Art and Screen Media,
Birkbeck, University of London
Dr Joe Cain, Department of Science and Technology Studies,
University College London
Dr Simon Chaplin, Wellcome Library
Dr Peter Funnell, National Portrait Gallery
Funded by the AHRC through a Research Networking grant.