The 2015 Cooper Union exhibition, Bring Your Own Body, historicized notions of transgender identity through the lens of the Kinsey Archives. Justin Vivian Bond (r) making final installation touches to the exhibition.

Mx. Justin Vivian Bond’s with installation, My Model / My Self, 2015.

Image of Alannah Farrell's The Stalker’s Shadow (Angel, Lower East Side), 2020. Oil on canvas, 52 x 64 inches. 

Alannah Farrell is a queer transgender painter who lives and works in New York. They graduated from The Cooper Union in 2011 and are represented by Harper’s Gallery, New York, and Anat Ebgi Gallery, Los Angeles.

Image of Eli Hill's The Artist as a Naturalist, 2022. Oil on canvas, 52 x 64 inches.

 Eli Hill (he/they) is an artist living and working in Queens, New York. He graduated from The Cooper Union in 2017 and holds an M.F.A. from Rutgers University. In addition to art-making, Hill is a dedicated educator, writer, New York City Parks steward, and volunteer for Trans Lifeline.

In Spring 2016, The Cooper Union made national news when it became the first college in the country to remove gendered signs from all of its restrooms and replace them with signs indicating only the available lavatory facilities.

In 2021, The Cooper Union celebrated Indigenous Peoples’ Day with a Great Hall performance entitled We Will Always Be Here, featuring Grammy Award–winning musician,artist, educator, and dancer Ty Defoe (Giizhig). Defoe, who is from the Oneida and Ojibwe Nations, identifies as two-spirit and interweaves his artistic projects with social justice, indigeneity, trans rights, and Indigi-Queering.

Lynn Conway is an internationally recognized advocate for trans rights who led a revolution in microchip design in Silicon Valley in the late 1970s—advances that are credited with making cell phones and laptops possible. Yet as she showed in her 2020 virtual Great Hall lecture, innovations by women, people of color, and LGBTQIA+ people often “disappear” from the histories of technology and science

A member of Kinding Sindaw performs as part of the 2022 EstroGenius Festival, an annual celebration of the artistry of femme, non-binary, non-conforming, and trans womxn artists produced by Melissa Riker and Maura Nguyen Donohue.

Murray Hill (l) is Mr. Showbiz. Anointed “Downtown’s New ‘It’ Boy” by The New York Times, he’s a relentless shtick-slinger, larger-than-life personality, and freewheeling ad-libber. He’s been selected as OUT’s Top 100 influential performers twice; included in New York Magazine’s “Fifty Most Iconic Gender Benders of All Time”; and named one of the Top 12 gender-bending performers in New York City by Time Out.

Peppermint (r), a longtime key figure in queer nightlife, rose to nation-wide fame when she became the first out trans contestant on Rupaul’s Drag Race. She finished as runner-up in one of the series’ most-talked-about finales. Soon after, her talent led her to become the first trans woman to originate a principal role on Broadway in the hit musical Head Over Heels. She currently serves on the board of GLAAD, and she is the ACLU’s Artist Ambassador for Transgender Justice.

The New York City Gay Mens Chorus (NYCGMC), which was founded in 1980 and held its debut holiday concert that year in The Cooper Union’s Great Hall, is comprised of more than 260 talented singers of various ages, backgrounds, and experiences. Together, the NYCGMC produces a vibrant sound and energy that audiences can feel and connect with. Through the power of this sound, and spectacular performances, the NYCGMC is a fearless champion for love, equality, and acceptance. Over the years, NYCGMC has performed with an amazing array of performers and artists including Barbara Cook, Elaine Stritch, Joan Rivers, Stephen Sondheim, Kelli O’Hara, Sia, Alan Cumming, and the New York Philharmonic—to name just a few.