Chaeeun Lee

Adjunct Instructor

Chaeeun Lee is a Ph.D. candidate in Art History at CUNY Graduate Center specializing in Asian American and Asian diasporic art. Her dissertation focuses on the intersection of abstraction and race, gender, and sexuality in Asian American art from the 1960s to the early 1980s. She has published a peer-reviewed article on the Filipino American artist Carlos Villa in Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas and was the 2023-24 Predoctoral Fellow in Asian American Art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

  • 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.