Promising Future, Complex Past: Artificial Intelligence and the Legacy of Physiognomy

The MCC Libraries Present:

A traveling exhibition from The National Library of Medicine

The MCC Libraries have been selected as a hosting site for the National Library of Medicine's traveling exhibition Promising Future, Complex Past: Artificial Intelligence and the Legacy of Physiognomy presents the history of physiognomy. 

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.

Exhibition locations, dates, and hours:

This is a free exhibition open to everyone - students, college employees, and the community.

The National Library of Medicine produced this exhibition and companion website.