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Amy Westpfahl

Director of Admissions
Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture
and School of Art

Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin Amy Westpfahl currently lives and works in New York City. She received her BFA from The Cooper Union School for the Advancement of Art in 2000, and her MFA in Combined Media from Hunter College in 2007.

 

Westpfahl is a conceptual based artist working in multiple disciplines: drawing, photography, printmaking, sculpture, installation, and performance/video. Her ideas explore contemporary social, economic or political concerns of today such as, the widening gap between social classes, gentrification, feminism, and human rights. Her work is also heavily influenced by her long time community engagement as an activist in the Lower East Side. Ideas of beauty and humor can also be found in her work as well, as she believes the subtlety of interjecting them can often help catch the attention of the viewer, this is important to her when presenting ideas that may otherwise be, overlooked.

 

Westpfahl has worked as the Coordinator of Recruitment & Admissions for The Cooper Union School of Art Admissions Committee for 16 year, in addition she is also Adjunct Associate Professor at Borough of Manhattan Community College and Lehman College in the Bronx where she teaches photography. She has exhibited her work in California, Iowa, New Jersey, Puerto Rico, The Czech Repbublic as well as, throughout the New York area such as, Priska Juschka Fine Art, Artist Space, ISE Cultural Foundation and Local Project.

Chandelier Study No.2: NY Times Series, 2017, Digital image printed on metal, 16 x 16"
Chandelier Study No.2: NY Times Series, 2017, Digital image printed on metal, 16 x 16"

 

  • Founded by inventor, industrialist and philanthropist Peter Cooper in 1859, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art offers education in art, architecture and engineering, as well as courses in the humanities and social sciences.

  • “My feelings, my desires, my hopes, embrace humanity throughout the world,” Peter Cooper proclaimed in a speech in 1853. He looked forward to a time when, “knowledge shall cover the earth as waters cover the great deep.”

  • From its beginnings, Cooper Union was a unique institution, dedicated to founder Peter Cooper's proposition that education is the key not only to personal prosperity but to civic virtue and harmony.

  • Peter Cooper wanted his graduates to acquire the technical mastery and entrepreneurial skills, enrich their intellects and spark their creativity, and develop a sense of social justice that would translate into action.