Minsley’s Museum Talk to Shed Light on Sculptor’s Process

Critics regard Seymour Lipton, who received a prestigious Guggenheim Award and was a member of the influential “New York School,” as one of America’s most influential sculptors of the 20th century.

UNC-Chapel Hill’s Ackland Art Museum is featuring his piece titled “Sentinel II” in its current “The Guardian and the Avant-Garde: Seymour Lipton’s Sentinel II in Context” exhibition. Lipton’s artistic career will figure prominently in a Community Day program the Ackland is sponsoring all day Friday (Nov. 27).

Before committing his professional life to sculpture, though, Lipton was a dentist. Dr. Glenn Minsley, associate professor of prosthodontics at the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Dentistry, will present a lecture on the sculptural skills and techniques used in facial prosthetic reconstruction as a part of the Community Day events.

Minsley’s talk, “The Art (and Science) of Facial Prosthetics,” will be held 11 a.m. in Gallery 11, located on the second floor. Admission is free.

Minsley will discuss and demonstrate the sculptural skills and techniques used in facial prosthetic reconstruction.

“Part of the process in prosthetic facial reconstruction involves sculpting the facial anatomy similarly to the way an artist would sculpt a statue,” Minsley said. “Also, the coloring process of the prosthesis to match skin color would be similar as to how an artist would combine various colors to create the proper hues and contrasts to recreate a natural scene in a painting.  We use similar materials that artists use to recreate the facial form and color for the facial prostheses.”

Minsley’s presentation will include images of actual facial reconstruction that may be graphic in nature; for that reason, the lecture is recommended for older teens and adults.

A full schedule of the day’s events is available at www.ackland.org.