Doug Ashford has been teaching at The Cooper Union School of Art since 1987 and was made a professor in 2019. His work there been his principal occupation for most of his life, where regularly taught classes have been Sculpture: Open Studio, The Intra-Disciplinary Seminar and for first-year students, Three-Dimensional Design. Over the years he has also worked on developing seminars focusing on cultural censorship, “public” art and post-humanist approaches to visual thinking. Overall the goal has been to try to turn classrooms into places where new practices for thinking and making can be developed by students with and for each other. Some of the foundation for this work has origin in Group Material’s insistence on inventing new contexts for the design of public life and new apparatuses for the experiences of art. Other bases have developed from the radical traditions of The Cooper Union School of Art itself: a historic proposition to extend education’s developmental parameters beyond the limitations of market driven economies; to make education “free.” Since the 1980’s, Ashford has also consistently worked at teaching seminars, performing as a visiting critic and lecturing in multiple institutions around the world. The following pages center on Ashford’s investment in the work of education as as an ongoing practical experience, distinct from teaching models often presented as artworks.
Cooper Union bio website _ (link)
“Tenure Track” A Comic by Molika Ashford_(link)
