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2023 Grant Awards

Portraiture

  • Ivan Drpic
  • College of Arts & Sciences, History of Art Department
  • First-Year Seminar Grant
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What does it mean to depict a person? And how might culturally specific notions of individual identity inform the making of images we call portraits? This first-year seminar grapples with such questions through a wide-ranging exploration of portraiture as a genre in the Western tradition, from antiquity to the present. We will examine a variety of images, including marble busts and oil paintings, photographs and death masks, coins and religious icons, and of course, selfies, in order to gain a deeper understanding of the changing relationship between personhood and visual representation across history. While attending to the diverse forms, functions, and meanings of portraiture, we will also investigate issues surrounding the authority and agency of images; the concept of physiognomic likeness; self-fashioning and self-display; and the interconnections among gender, race, class, and identity.

  • 2023
  • College of Arts & Sciences
  • First-Year Seminar
  • History of Art Department
  • Teaching Art Grant

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The Sachs Program for Arts Innovation

John McInerney (he/him)
Executive Director
215-573-0874
mcinernj@upenn.edu

Chloe Reison (she/her)
Associate Director
215-573-2159
reison@upenn.edu

Elizabeth Shaw (she/her)
Administrative Assistant
215-898-5930
elizshaw@upenn.edu

The Sachs Program for Arts Innovation offices are located at the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts at the University of Pennsylvania.

3680 Walnut Street
Philadelphia PA

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