This guide supports HSLIC's hosting of the National Library of Medicine's traveling exhibit, Promising Future, Complex Past: Artificial Intelligence and the Legacy of Physiognomy.
The exhibit will be on display in HSLIC from March 3 - April 12, 2025 and is free and open to the public.
Be sure to join us for our corresponding programs: an opening reception on March 6, 9am-11am in HSLIC and a special AI Crossroads on March 25, 1pm-2pm via Zoom. Both programs are free and open to the public as well as the UNM and HSC communities.
All images in this guide are courtesy of the National Library of Medicine.
The National Library of Medicine produced Promising Future, Complex Past: Artificial Intelligence and the Legacy of Physiognomy, guest curated by Erika Mills (National Library of Medicine).
The traveling banner exhibition and companion website presents the history of physiognomy— the practice of assessing one’s mental character based on physical attributes—and explores its influence on contemporary artificial intelligence and computer science technologies that gather and interpret body data.
Now debunked as pseudoscience, physiognomy enjoyed periods of legitimacy and popularity over a history spanning millennia, being discredited in the 20th century. We’ve rejected the harmful aspects of physiognomy, but efforts to gain information from physical characteristics continue with today’s technologies, which have positive potential.
Promising Future, Complex Past includes a selection of health information resources and a digital gallery of fully digitized items from the historical collections of the NLM, which are also available in their entirety in NLM Digital Collections.
[Description from the NLM website]
