Caltech Y Friends Dinner with Professor Katherine Faber -- "Where Art Meets Science: Solving Art's Mysteries"

Dusting off 2,000-year-old mummy portraits from the Fayum region of Egypt to investigate artists' materials, pinpointing the culprits behind the faded brilliance of Seurat's oil painting "A Sunday on La Grande Jatte", and classifying the provenance of Picasso's bronze sculptures – puzzles that, when unraveled, expand our knowledge of art history and provide insight into how best to protect works of cultural heritage. The coupling of science, engineering, and art will be discussed through these examples. They demonstrate how bridges can be built across disciplines and between universities and museums, enabling a new kind of art history.  The focus will be on work performed through the Northwestern University-Art Institute of Chicago Center for Scientific Studies in the Arts.

About the Speaker

Katherine T. Faber currently holds the positions of Simon Ramo Professor of Materials Science at the Caltech and Co-Director of the Northwestern University-Art Institute of Chicago Center for Scientific Studies in the Arts at Northwestern University.  Her research interests include fracture of brittle materials, toughening mechanisms, ceramic composites and coatings, porous ceramics, and cultural heritage science. Educated at Alfred University with a BS in Ceramic Engineering, she earned an MS in Ceramic Science at the Pennsylvania State University and a PhD in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley.  Among Professor Faber's awards are the National Science Foundation's Presidential Young Investigator Award, Distinguished Life Member of the American Ceramic Society, Fellow of ASM International, and the Charles E. MacQuigg Award for Outstanding Teaching at Ohio State. She is an ISI Highly Cited Author in Materials (2003), served as President of the American Ceramic Society (2006-07), and was elected to the 2014 American Academy of Arts and Sciences class of fellows.