Cooper Union

Walid Raad

Professor

Professor Raad will be on sabbatical for the 2019/20 academic year, returning in the Fall of 2020.

In part, an artist and a Professor of Art in The still-charging-tuition Cooper Union. [And the school should stop doing so now before yet more debt burdens more students who are not the ones who mismanaged the school’s finances; its Board of Trustees and administrators did so for decades (check out the lawsuit against the Board.)] The list of exhibitions (good, bad and mediocre ones); awards and grants (merited, not merited, grateful for, rejected and/or returned); education (some of it thought-provoking; some of it, less so); publications (I am fond of some of my books, but more so of the books of Jalal Toufic), can be found somewhere online.

Founded by inventor, industrialist and philanthropist Peter Cooper in 1859, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art offers education in art, architecture and engineering, as well as courses in the humanities and social sciences.
“My feelings, my desires, my hopes, embrace humanity throughout the world,” Peter Cooper proclaimed in a speech in 1853. He looked forward to a time when, “knowledge shall cover the earth as waters cover the great deep.”
From its beginnings, Cooper Union was a unique institution, dedicated to founder Peter Cooper's proposition that education is the key not only to personal prosperity but to civic virtue and harmony.
Peter Cooper wanted his graduates to acquire the technical mastery and entrepreneurial skills, enrich their intellects and spark their creativity, and develop a sense of social justice that would translate into action.