For the second consecutive year, a Cooper Union School of Art student has won the Village Alliance’s Student Art Competition. This year's winner was sophomore Ari Barash, who installed a four-painting series titled LONGLIVEYUL: NOMADIC COSMOLOGY on Astor Place. The work was printed on vinyl to wrap four utility boxes across Astor Place’s North and South Plazas. It will remain on view throughout the summer as part of the Village Alliance Art in Plazas program. Barash, whose multidisciplinary practice spans painting, sound design, installation, and performance, also received a cash prize of $1,000. 

The competition invites students and recent graduates from Manhattan-based higher education art programs to submit designs to be showcased at Astor Place. Students from over a dozen programs entered. The 2026 applicant pool was four times the size of 2025’s inaugural year, which then first-year student Juliana Woods won. 

Barash’s tableaus—spanning abstraction, figuration, and landscape painting—won judges over for their clarity of vision yet endless interpretability. Barash noted that the series emerged after the loss of his older brother, Yul, in 2024. “At its core, the series reflects a trust in the persistence of connection despite the impossibility of resolving grief. It embraces flux as both destabilizing and generative, where longing, trust, and love remain in constant motion.” ‍ 

This year the Village Alliance also recognized work by several finalists, including junior Jane Forrest who will receive a gift certificate for supplies from Blick Art Materials.