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Marek Bartelik

Adjunct Associate Professor

Dr. Bartelik was born in Olsztyn, Poland, and in 1985 moved to the United States, where he currently resides. He holds a Master of Science degree in Civil Engineering from Columbia University and a PhD in Art History from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He has been teaching modern and contemporary art at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York since 1996. He has also been a Visiting Professor at Yale and MIT. Dr. Bartelik is a Graduate Critic-in-Residence at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. He has lectured nationally and internationally at, among other places, MoMA in New York and the Boston Museum of Art in Boston (USA), the Polish Academy of Science in Warsaw (Poland), the Municipal Museum in The Hague (Holland), the Museo National de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires (Argentina), and the Pinacoteca in São Paulo (Brazil). He is a regular contributor to Artforum International, for which he wrote reviews from over twenty countries on five continents. 

  • 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.