ARTS 270 Art, Ethics, Medicine: The PPE Portrait Project

Art, Ethics and Medicine: The PPE Portrait Project is a four credit class focused on the tenets of the the PPE Portrait Project. The PPE Portrait Project is an interdisciplinary social practice art project that is transforming best medical practice.  The project humanizes anonymous masked healthcare workers with wearable portraits affixed to the outside of their hazmat suits. Created in 2014 by Occidental College professor Mary Beth Heffernan in response to the Ebola epidemic, the PPE Portrait Project is now supporting COVID care at USC-Keck Hospital, Stanford Medical School, UMASS, Mass General and advising nearly a dozen other hospitals across the US and beyond.  At the heart of the PPE Portrait Project is the centrality of the image, and the role of the face in generating empathy, compassion and ethical behavior. 

The PPE Portrait Project Semester will combine theory, research and practice together with the community engagement (ARTS 275) intrinsic to this social practice art project.  Students will learn how artists act as innovators and catalysts of change; the art history and visual studies of representing the face, including portraiture, photography, and discredited attempts to read intellect or morals in the appearance of a face. Students will also learn about the connections between visual culture (like portraits) and science, including the developmental concepts of facial recognition, and representation recognition in infants and others; the neuroscience of mirror neurons and the biological basis of intersubjectivity as the foundation of ethical behavior; the philosophy of bioethics and notions of patient self-determination and agency; and the biology and physiology of social and cultural actions. Students will learn how looking at images has the power to physically change a person's body. Through this project, students will deepen their understanding of the structures and processes of privilege, exclusion, and marginalization that shape healthcare in the United States.