Anyone who walked into Room 501 at the New York Academy of Art in TriBeCa the other day would have seen a roomful of sculpture students molding clay into faces that looked nearly alive.

But the people represented by the sculptures had all met ugly deaths and were found as skeletons in desolate places across New York City — train tracks, wooded areas, in a basement.

Most of the bodies bore various violent clues, including dismemberment, bullets to the head and other blunt force trauma, the instructor, Joe Mullins, told the art students. The bodies all had one thing in common.

“They lost their identity,” said Mr. Mullins, a forensic imaging specialist. “We’re going to give it back to them.”