Launch: July 27, 2020
For the first-time The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art School of Art goes virtual for its annual end of year show. Launching on Monday, July 27, 2020, the exhibition continues in the college’s time-honored tradition at endofyearshow2020.cooper.edu and remains online for a year.
In many ways the 2020 end of year show mirrors School of Art undergraduate student exhibitions from decades past; the exhibition publicly positions more than 200 works from over 200 students across all four years, with selected works representing the entire 2019–20 academic year. Yet, this was a year unlike any others due to the global pandemic that interrupted much of the Spring 2020 semester; students and professors pivoted toward online learning and the exploration of diversity of site-specificity as central to a studio-based program, all new experiences. And like the changing dynamic of how work was made, the virtual end of year show reflects what it means to be a digital representation documenting a year in flux.
Visitors to the virtual exhibition start with a live camera feed of Cooper’s landmark Foundation Building, the space where much of the school’s studios, classrooms, and shops are housed. The site navigates through the variety of work in multiple ways including student names; names of faculty; projects (exchange, senior projects, and fellowships are examples of projects that develop over the course of the full academic year); areas of study (i.e. painting, sculpture, photography, performance, graphic design, draft notations, and more); forum (an open space where chance and flux bring forward new conversations and encounters between works); studio; and Foundation. (Foundation comprises a series of courses taken during the first year of study by art students. The year is intended to prepare students for all future areas of advanced study within the curriculum. It includes sustained focus and engagement with formal and conceptual exercises, where students develop and investigate the specifics of visual and spatial phenomena.) Works are tagged for multiple areas, reflecting on the interdisciplinarity central to the school’s ethos. Although the current crisis has necessitated an online mode for sharing and experiencing work, this site opens up a new model for future end of year show Shows, in partnership with a physical experience.
The EOYS design team includes a cluster of students and faculty advisors: Diego Herrera A’21 (lead designer) / Lucas Zeeberg A’22 (lead designer) / Caitlin Edwards A’23 / Martia Thomas A’23 / Amanda Blanca A’23 / Erin Sparling, Adjunct Professor, School of Art / Alexander Tochilovsky, Associate Professor, School of Art / EOYS Faculty Advisory Committee
About The Cooper Union School of Art
The mission of the School of Art is to educate artists in the broadest sense, both as creative practitioners engaged with a wide range of disciplines in the visual arts and as enlightened citizens of the world who are prepared to question and transform society. The program is structured around an integrated curriculum that fosters connections between disciplines, as well as between traditional and new media. Central to the school’s philosophy is the advancement of the artist’s role in relation to the prevailing forms and institutions of cultural production. Students are challenged to expand their research and experimentation across The Cooper Union, as well as in the surrounding urban environment and in the wider public sphere.
