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Adriana Farmiga Named Dean of Cooper Union School of Art

POSTED ON: June 5, 2024

Adriana Farmiga introduces War/Art Balance: Deimperializing the Soviet Avant-Garde at the Time of Russia’s War on Ukraine, Its Culture, and People" held in the Great Hall on April 27, 2023

Adriana Farmiga introduces the Great Hall program, "War/Art Balance: Deimperializing the Soviet Avant-Garde at the Time of Russia’s War on Ukraine, Its Culture, and People" held on April 27, 2023. Photo by Marget Long.

Demetrius Eudell, Vice President of Academic Affairs, announced today the appointment of Adriana Farmiga as the full-time dean of the college’s School of Art, effective July 1, 2024. A practicing artist and a 1996 Cooper alumna as well as faculty member since 2011, Farmiga has been acting dean since January 2024, after serving as assistant from 2017-2018 and then associate dean from 2018-2023.

“Adriana seamlessly stepped in to lead the School of Art this winter,” said Eudell. “Her leadership, which draws on the entire breadth of her Cooper experiences, from student to faculty, has contributed significantly to the school’s dynamic learning environment.”   

A first generation Ukrainian-American whose family immigrated by way of Argentina, Farmiga is a vocal advocate for free education and community building at The Cooper Union. Operating within a realm of dichotomous iconographies that mirror her own experience of cultural shifts, Farmiga’s studio practice considers the ways in which identity is shaped through the uncanny and quotidian. Her work has been exhibited in the US and abroad in several galleries and institutions such as Tensta Konsthall, Dorsky Museum, and the Ukrainian Institute, and has been reviewed in The New York Times and Artforum among other publications. She has also worked with La MaMa Galleria in the East Village since 2007 as a program advisor, helping usher in critically acclaimed partnerships and programming, most notably with Visual AIDS. She’s held Art Omi and Joan Mitchell Center artist residencies, as well as MacDowell and Socrates Sculpture Park fellowships. In addition to her Bachelor’s of Fine Art degree from Cooper, Farmiga received her M.F.A. from the Milton Avery School of the Arts at Bard College.  

"I am both honored and humbled to continue my service on behalf of the School of Art and to help evolve this community of artists and cultural practitioners as dean, especially now when the world so deeply needs them and as we here at Cooper get closer to our plan of returning to the tuition-free model we have so fiercely advocated for,” said Farmiga.  

More News from The Cooper Union

  • 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.