The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of December 17, 2025

Pixelated black-and-white computer composite of multiple faces into a face with a light skin tone, square jaw, and light hair falling across forehead before disappearing into a dark band around the top of the head. The face looks out at the viewer, with narrow eyes, a flat nose, and lips pressed together in a line turned slightly down.

Mankind (An Oriental, a Caucasian, and a Black weighted according to current population statistics)

1983–85, printed 1999

Nancy Burson

(American, b. 1948)
America
gelatin silver print
Image: 22.8 x 19.4 cm (9 x 7 5/8 in.); Framed: 48.4 x 44.5 cm (19 1/16 x 17 1/2 in.)
The Jane B. Tripp Charitable Lead Annuity Trust 2020.76
© Nancy Burson
Location: Not on view

Did You Know?

Burson used pictures from a 19th-century book of racial stereotypes and weighted their visibility in the resulting composite to reflect world population statistics in the mid-1980s.

Description

Although the image, if done with 2020 population statistics, might not look terribly different, the concept of race has changed in the intervening decades. Racial identity is often now discussed as a social rather than biological construct and is no longer considered a valid division by most geneticists.
  • 1999
    Studio of the Artist
    2000
    (Jan Kesner Gallery, Los Angeles, CA)
    2000-2020
    John J. McDonough Museum of Art, Youngstown State University, Youngstown, OH
    March 2, 2020
    The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
  • Burson, Nancy, Richard Carling, and David Kramlich. Composites: Computer-Generated Portraits. New York: Beech Tree Books, 1986.
    Burson, Nancy, Michael L. Sand, Lynn Gumpert, Terrie Sultan, and Christopher C. French. Seeing and Believing: The Art of Nancy Burson. Santa Fe, N.M.: Twin Palms, 2002.
  • {{cite web|title=Mankind (An Oriental, a Caucasian, and a Black weighted according to current population statistics)|url=false|author=Nancy Burson|year=1983–85, printed 1999|access-date=17 December 2025|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/2020.76