Nancy Burson

Nancy Burson combines art and innovation to challenge the concept of photographic truth through digital manipulation. Her work spans public art, software and scientific collaboration, contributing to both artistic and societal discourse. Burson is best known for developing morphing technologies that age-enhance the human face, a system adopted by law enforcement to help locate missing persons. Her patented Method and Apparatus for Producing an Image of a Person’s Face at a Different Age (1981) laid the foundation for these advancements.

Burson’s Human Race Machine, commissioned by Zaha Hadid for the London Millennium Dome, was used for over a decade as a diversity tool that allowed viewers to experience the visual effect of being another race.

Her work is held in museum collections worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, as well as the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., among others.