We are delighted to have acquired a portrait of the preeminent forensic anthropologist, Professor Dame Sue Black by the artist by Ken Currie. 

Titled Unknown Man (2019), Currie’s portrait has gone on public display for the very first time in the Gallery’s The Modern Portrait exhibition.

Professor Dame Sue Black has dedicated her life to forensic anthropology, including her many years at the Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification at the University of Dundee, assisting police with specialist forensic work, or travelling many war-torn and disaster-hit countries, including Iraq, Kosovo, and Thailand — helping to, in her words, "reunite the identity constructed during a life with what remains of the corporeal form in death”. She now works as Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Engagement at Lancaster University and is the current President of the Royal Anthropological Institute.

Currie’s poignant painting depicts Professor Black in surgical robes, standing behind the covered remains of a clothed cadaver, transfixing viewers with a stare that reflects both strength and fragility in equal measures. It is a stare that moved Professor Black to tears when she viewed the painting for the first time, last week. 

The idea for the portrait grew when Currie and Professor Black met during a BBC Radio 4 discussion programme on the relationship between art and anatomy. The artist later accepted an invite to visit Professor Black’s at work in Dundee, where she showed him a dissection room. Currie was so moved by the work he encountered there that he asked Professor Black to sit for a portrait. During the creation process, Currie also took a life mask of Professor Black.

Currie views Unknown Man as being connected to his popular Portrait Gallery commission Three Oncologists; the former representing a progression from his 2002 painting. With both works now on display in The Modern Portrait, visitors now have a very special opportunity to experience both in the same space.