Jennifer Packer

Assistant Professor

Jennifer Packer received her BFA from the Tyler School of Art in 2007 and her MFA from Yale University in 2012. She was a 2012-2013 Artist-in-Residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem and a Visual Arts Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA, from 2014- 2016. Her work was most recently featured in two major solo exhibitions: The Eye Is Not Satisfied With Seeing, a 10-year survey at the Serpentine Galleries in London and Whitney Museum of American Art, and Every Shut Eye Ain’t Sleep at LA MOCA. Her first solo institutional exhibition, Tenderheaded, was shown at the Renaissance Society in Chicago in 2017 and at the Rose Museum at Brandeis University. Her work was included in the 2019 Whitney Biennial and P.5 - Prospect New Orleans (2021).

  • 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.