Faces

Four thousand years of portraits

Pharaohs and farmers, emperors and children, self-portraits in the mirror. What a face was meant to say changed across the centuries, from power and piety to the plain likeness of a person.

Walk in The whole museum

When it’s on

In The Season’s hall, off the Hall: July 2026.

The works

The works are chosen when the exhibition is hung, a few days before it opens.

Where the works come from

Every work in the Mouseion is a real piece, out of copyright everywhere, shown from the open collections of the museums that hold it — each label names the original’s museum and links to its page there.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art — Open Access
The Art Institute of Chicago — public-domain collection
The Cleveland Museum of Art — Open Access
Wikimedia Commons — public-domain photographs of works held elsewhere