Emily L. Spratt

Adjunct Assistant Professor

Emily L. Spratt is an art historian and technologist with specialization in Byzantine and Renaissance art and the use of artificial intelligence in the visual arts. She earned her Ph.D. from Princeton University and completed her post-doctorate at Columbia University. At Princeton and the University of California, Los Angeles, she also obtained M.A. degrees, and received her B.A. from Cornell University. Spratt is currently writing two books, one on the legacy of Byzantium in the early modern period, and another on art, AI, and the ethics of emerging image-based technologies. Known for her innovative and pioneering approach to art and technology, Spratt has collaborated with Alain Passard on the creation of art with Gastronomic Algorithms in the style of Giuseppe Arcimboldo, the Campari Group on the AI-inspired film Fellini Forward, and the office of President Emmanuel Macron to curate the exhibition Au-delà du Terroir, Beyond AI Art for the Global Forum on AI for Humanity. Spratt has received fellowships and awards from the Onassis Foundation, the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, the Cini Foundation, the Cyprus American Archaeological Research Institute, the American Research Center in Sofia, the Hellenic Ministry of Culture, the Frick Collection and Art Reference Library, the Montreal AI Ethics Institute, and the universities from where she holds degrees. At UCLA, she held the President’s Fellowship, and at Princeton, she was a Stanley J. Seeger Fellow in Hellenic Studies and a fellow in the Institute for International and Regional Studies.

 

  • 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.