Urban Visionaries

Urban Visionaries Graphic
At the event
At the event
At the event

Eighth Annual Urban Visionaries Award
Dinner and Silent Art Auction

The Cooper Union’s Eighth Annual Urban Visionaries Benefit raised $600,000 in support of full-tuition scholarships. The award dinner took place on Tuesday, November 9, 2010 at 7 World Trade Center—a dramatic downtown space with spectacular 360-degree views of New York City, again donated by Larry Silverstein. The evening got off to a great start with the opening of the Silent Art Auction featuring the work of 43 noted artists, architects and designers, followed by dinner and awards presentation to this year’s extraordinary line-up on honorees who represent the best of New York City’s civic, art, architecture and science communities.

Honoring

DANNY MEYER—Urban Citizenship
MARINA ABRAMOVIC—Visual Art
FRANK O. GEHRY—Architecture
BRIAN GREENE—Engineering & Science
THE BRUCE HIGH QUALITY FOUNDATION—Emerging Talent

The award presented to the honorees silhouettes the New York City skyline against a model of founder Peter Cooper’s spectacles, laser-etched in crystal and mounted on stainless steel.

Congratulations and thanks for the huge success of this year’s dinner go to dinner chairs trustee Marc Appleton and Joanna Kerns, Cooper Union parents Jules Demchick and Barbara Nessim, Judy and trustee Douglas A.P. Hamilton and president’s council member Toshiko Mori (AR’76).

For further information, please call 212-353-4100 or email uv@cooper.edu.

Many thanks to the Empire State Building Company for the special lighting on the evening of November 9, 2010 in celebration of The Cooper Union's Eighth Annual Urban Visionaries Benefit.www.esbnyc.com

  • 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.