Cooper Union - Notable Alumni

Notable Alumni

With fewer than 1,000 students, Alumni of the Cooper Union win a vastly disproportionate share of the nation's most prestigious awards. Recent awards include one Nobel Prize, ten Rome Prizes, 18 Guggenheim fellowships, three MacArthur fellowships, nine Chrysler Design awards, and three American Institute of Architects Thomas Jefferson Awards for Public Architecture. The school also boasts more than 23 Fulbright scholars since 2001, and ten National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships since 2004.

The Cooper Union Alumni Council presents three awards annually to notable alumni: the Augustus Saint Gaudens Award for professional achievement in art, the Gano Dunn Award for professional achievement in engineering, industry, or finance, and the John Q. Hejduk Award for architecture alumni who have made an outstanding contribution to the theory, teaching and/or practice of architecture. Other awards presented by the Alumni Council are the Alumnus of the Year and the Young Alumnus of the Year Awards.

Notable alumni of the Cooper Union include:

  • John Alcorn, illustrator
  • Stan Allen, Dean of the School of Architecture, Princeton University
  • Daniel Arsham, artist, with alumnus Alex Mustonen established Snarkitecture
  • Alex Bag, video artist
  • Shigeru Ban, pioneer of "Paper Architecture"
  • Donald Baechler, painter
  • Karen Bausman, Rome Prize recipient, the only American woman architect to hold both the Eliot Noyes (Harvard) and Eero Saarinen (Yale) chairs
  • Billy Bitzer, cinematographer
  • Louise Brann, muralist
  • Dik Browne, cartoonist and creator of Hagar the Horrible
  • Albert Carnesale, former chancellor of UCLA
  • Martin Charnin, Tony Award-winning lyricist, writer, and theatre director
  • Remy Charlip, choreographer, writer, and illustrator
  • John Walter Christie, engineer and inventor
  • Guy Coheleach, wildlife artist
  • Will Cotton, painter
  • Miriam Cooper, silent film actress who appeared in Birth of a Nation
  • William Francis Deegan, architect and political leader, namesake of the Major Deegan Expressway
  • Roy DeCarava, photographer
  • Elizabeth Diller, with Ricardo Scofidio, the first architects to win a MacArthur Prize
  • Michael Doret, graphic designer, font designer, lettering artist
  • Lou Dorfsman
  • Thomas Edison, inventor
  • Jeffrey Epstein, investor
  • Mitch Epstein, photographer
  • Thom Fitzgerald, filmmaker
  • Audrey Flack, pioneer of photorealism
  • Max Fleischer, animator
  • Robert Florczak, artist, illustrator, author, composer
  • Laura Ford, sculptor
  • Janet Gardner, filmmaker
  • Milton Glaser, graphic designer, founder New York Magazine, creator of the I Love New York logo
  • Sagi Haviv, partner, Chermayeff & Geismar; designer of the Library of Congress and Armani Exchange logos
  • John Hejduk, one of New York Five a group of five New York City architects
  • Eva Hesse
  • Chuck Hoberman, winner of the Chrysler Design Award for Innovation and Design.
  • Kim Holleman, artist
  • Russell Hulse, a 1993 winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics.
  • Alexander Isley, graphic designer
  • Crockett Johnson, author of Harold and the Purple Crayon
  • Bob Kane (1915–1998), comic book artist and writer, creator of Batman
  • Michael J. King, professor of Petroleum Engineering, Texas A&M
  • William King
  • R.B. Kitaj, painter
  • Lee Krasner, painter
  • Daniel Libeskind, architect for the reconstruction of the World Trade Center
  • Herb Lubalin
  • Ellen Lupton, graphic designer, writer, curator and educator
  • Noah Lyon, artist
  • Jay Maisel, photographer
  • Fred Marcellino, illustrator
  • Sylvia Plimack Mangold
  • Joseph Margulies, artist
  • Mike Mills, filmmaker
  • Matthew Monahan, sculptor
  • Jacqueline Moss, art historian, educator
  • Michel Mossessian, architect
  • Wangechi Mutu, artist
  • Albert Nerken, chemical engineer, industrialist and philanthropist
  • Victor Papanek, early proponent of ecologically and socially responsible design
  • Bruce Pasternack, President and CEO of the Special Olympics
  • Charles E. Pont, painter, illustrator, printmaker, graphic designer
  • Andrea Robbins and Max Becher, artists and educators
  • Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Beaux-Arts sculptor
  • Erik Sanko, marionette-maker and leader of the rock band Skeleton Key
  • Alfred Sarant Soviet spy, and later became head of Zelenograd, the Soviet "silicon valley"
  • Richard Sarles, CEO and General Manager of Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority
  • Domitilla Sartogo, owner, founding partner and executive director of DRAGO Media Kompany
  • Augusta Savage, sculptor
  • Arnold Alfred Schmidt, painter
  • Sy Schulman, civil engineer and planner, Mayor of White Plains, New York (1993-1997)
  • Ricardo Scofidio, with Elizabeth Diller, the first architects to win a MacArthur Prize
  • Samuel R. Scottron, inventor, grandfather of entertainer Lena Horne
  • Georgette Seabrooke, muralist, artist, art therapist and educator
  • George Segal, pop art sculptor
  • Redmond Simonsen, graphic artist and game designer at the wargame company Simulations Publications, Inc.
  • Dr. Michael B. Sisti, neurosurgeon at Columbia University
  • Zak Smith, artist
  • Charles B.J. Snyder (1860–1945), chief architect and Superintendent of School Buildings, New York City Board of Education, 1891–1923
  • Edward Sorel, graphic designer
  • Thaddeus Strassberger, opera director
  • Philip Taaffe, painter
  • TRUE, artist
  • Hy Turkin, sportswriter and editor of the first baseball encyclopedia
  • Richard Velazquez, Honda and Porsche designer
  • Allyson Vieira, artist
  • Edward J. Wasp, engineer and pioneer of slurry pipelines
  • Adolph Alexander Weinman, sculptor
  • Tom Wesselmann, painter
  • Jerome Witkin, painter
  • Joel-Peter Witkin, fine art photographer
  • Dan Witz, painter, street artist
  • Tobi Wong, designer, artist
  • Harry Zaverdas, ITC Herb Lubalin Award 1985, graphic designer, photographer

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