Diana Cooper

Diana Cooper is a New York-based mixed-media artist whose abstract works translate patterns found in nature and the artificial human environment into her own visual language. Increasingly photography and video play an important role in her work.

Cooper has exhibited extensively domestically and abroad, including at PS1/MoMA, the Whitney Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, MOCA Cleveland, the Sharjah Biennale, and the He Xiangning Museum. In 2007, Cooper had a 10-year retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland titled Beyond the Line. Cooper is the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships, including the Rome Prize, a Guggenheim, a Pollock-Krasner, NYFA, a Joan Mitchell, and Anonymous Was a Woman, and in 2025 she was inducted into The National Academy of Design. From 1998–2024, Cooper was represented by Postmasters Gallery in NYC.

Cooper’s most recent public artwork, “Double Take,” is permanently installed on Roosevelt Island. This 100-foot outdoor installation was commissioned by the MTA. She has also completed several other public projects, including “Out of the Corner of My Eye” at the Jerome Parker Campus in Staten Island—commissioned by the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs Percent for Art program—and “High Wire,” an installation that spans seven 17ft walls for the Moss Arts Center at Virginia Tech.

Ms. Cooper received a BA in History and Literature from Harvard College and an MFA in Painting from Hunter College. She also attended the New York Studio School. Cooper has taught in graduate and undergraduate programs at RISD, Yale, NYU, VCU, Cornell, Princeton and SVA. She currently teaches Mixed Media: Collage at Columbia University. She created the course Mixed Media: Collage specifically for Columbia and has been teaching at Columbia since 2008.