As artists have embraced new technologies, they have attested to their seductiveness with increasing inventiveness and divergence in the use of new tools and materials. I recently met with a group of young female undergraduate studio art students at their request. Male students were seldom accused of the same intentions, they told me. How often art and science, together and separately, have seduced us throughout time. Each discipline must remain current, new, informed by history yet able to cut the path.
Artists strive to embrace our culture.
They grab a tool and explore, interpret, astonish, and educate, often motivated by their need to know and do something never known or done before. Having started in life with naked hands and an honest purpose, I persevered through long years of trial and effort to obtain the means to erect this building, which is now entirely devoted, with all its rents and revenue of every name and nature, to the advancement of science and art. I have begun a more focused and vigorous dialogue with many colleagues about these issues since coming to Cooper Union almost three years ago to be dean of the School of Art. Technology and art will each be reckoned with. I therefore could not resist the opportunity offered by caa to explore some of these ideas through an exhibition at a time when close to eight thousand international artists and art historians will be added to New York's vital arts community for a week in February.