Great Women "Speaking Portrait" Gallery
A travelling educational exhibit
The Great Women Portrait Project uses Art and AI to reveal the faces and impact of historic female pioneers who have been left, largely, out of the history books but paved world-changing paths in traditionally male-dominated fields like science, tech, engineering and math (STEM)...
...Women like Canada's first female nuclear physicist, Harriet Brooks. Here we see CEOs from across Canada hanging her portrait.
Embedded below at the top of this photo montage:
our first "speaking portrait" created for project pilot phase (length: 1 minute)
As we know, the 'female face' of STEM innovation is too seldom seen. Men, after all, were history's traditional record keepers; that's just the way things were, back in the day. But today we have the tools to fill in that gap in STEM education and our collective consciousness: we have AI; we have Art;.
we can marry use both to reveal history's 'hidden' scientists, inventors, engineers and innovators
... to today's students.
This is the goal of the Educational Phase of The Great Women Portrait Project.
A diverse group of Nova Scotia women, including STEM professionals, community and academic leaders, have been involved with The Great Women Portrait Project since its inception in 2023. These women, and others, would like to explore the idea of sharing 'speaking-portrait' galleries to schools as legacy gifts, to raise awareness of women's historic pioneering work in traditionally male-dominated fields like STEM.
A Portrait Installation at QEII: HERE
PILOT PHASE - TESTING: We've been testing the 'speaking portraits' in local private and public schools.
Here is ANDREW MACDONALD, IB Middle Years Programme Coordinator | Middle School Faculty, Halifax Grammar School (length: 2-minutes)
NASA pioneer Portrait Project's 'North Star'
Here is the first U.S. woman involved in the Great Women Portrait Project: Frances 'Poppy' Northcutt. She speaks here about the value and power of girls having role models and the impact of related images. (length: 2-minutes)
Great Women of STEM classroom portraits:
Hertha Ayrton and Gladys West
Some notes:
Each portrait is:
- under one minute, and
-includes a prompt to spark student engagement and research into the subject, and the portrait subject's work in her particular STEM field.
BOXED LINKS (below) to:
- a teachers 1-sheet (contains answers to questions posed by portrait subjects, and related research links
- a 1-sheet for students that could be shared/discussed
There is a 3rd video that shows a Great Woman portrait being completed (by the portrait artist & project producer, Jo Napier).