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Peter Nadin

Adjunct Professor

Peter Nadin was born in 1954 in Bromborough in the North of England.  Educated in England, he moved to New York City in 1976 after being presented with the Max Beckman Award at the Brooklyn Museum.  Since then, he has lived and worked in New York City, exhibiting his artwork in galleries and museums in Europe and America. 

Group exhibitions of his work have included Westkunst Cologne, 1981; Walker Art Center, 1983; Kunstmuseum Bern, 1985; Carpenter Center for Visual Arts, Harvard University, 1985; Le Nouveau Musee Lyon, 1986; Stadtische Kunsthalle Dusseldorf, 1987; and the Venice Biennale XLII, 1988.  Single person exhibitions have included Yale Center for British Art, 1992; American Fine Arts one-year poetry room installation 1990-91; Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, 1989; Brooke Alexander Gallery, 1986; Jay Gorney Modern Art, 1985; Le Nouveau Musee Lyon, 1981; and Museum fur (Sub) Kultur Berlin, 1981.  His work has been reviewed and discussed in many magazines and newspapers including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Art forum, Art in America, and Art News, as well as European publications.  His artwork is in public and private collections in America and Europe.  Public collections include Museum of Modern Art, New York, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Rooseum, Stockholm, Le Nouveau Musee, Lyon and the Museum fur (Sub) Kultur, Berlin, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.

He has written four books: The First Mark: notes on unlearning how to make art, Edgewise Press, New York, 2006.
Twelve Prints And Poems, Grenfell Press, New York, 1998; Tide of Tongues, Thea Westreich, New York, 1991; Still Life, Tanam Press, New York, 1983.  He also has coauthored three books: Eating Through Living, Tanam Press, 1981; Eating Friends, Top Stories, New York, 1981: Living, self published, New York, 1980.

In 1989, he began farming and painting on Old Field Farm in Greene County, New York.  In 1999, with the assistance of Dr Michael Salcman he developed a course at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art on the relationship between neurology and art, which he currently teaches.

Between 1992 and 2007 he stopped exhibiting.  In 2007 he exhibited The First Mark series at the Wifredo Lam Center, Havana, Cuba. The exhibition travelled to Pinar Del Rio, Matanzas, Holguin, San Antonio De Los Banos, and Cuba. The exhibition then traveled to Cuenca, Ecuador. An expanded version of the First Mark series will be shown at Gavin Brown’s enterprise June 29 through July 30 20011

  • 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.