Transformation Over the ages, as we know, science and art have found common footing and formed natural alliances. Possibly, an emergent age of transformation will bear witness again to a felicitous cultural convergence of science and art.

The Greek term “philosophy,” meaning love of wisdom, embraced all forms of knowledge. Science and art shared the same intellectual and spiritual domain. Stunning artifacts, enduring monuments, and transcendent writings attest to an age-old union. By the seventeenth century, however, science and art began to diverge along differing pathways. That cultural wedge has defied countless earnest efforts at reconciliation.

Happily, a far-sighted philanthropist in the mid-nineteenth century overlooked the contradistinctions and founded an institution devoted to the mutual advancement of science and art. His name was Peter Cooper and his Union has thrived for 137 years.

Earlier in this twentieth century, a Cooper Union art student despaired of his artistic skills and turned to his other love, science, where he flourished famously as a doctor. Later, pondering the cultural conundrum of his own passions, he concluded that “art and science are two sides of the same coin, science being a discipline pursued with passion and art a passion pursued with discipline.”

Now, in the domain of the Cooper Union, an international array of artists has created Techno-Seduction, a fascinating exploration of common ground. Under the co-curatorial direction of Deborah Willis of the Smithsonian Institution and Robert Rindler, Dean of the College’s School of Art, that cultural coin’s unyielding plane begins to dissolve. Between the two sides seduction is mutual. Art and science, invoking passion and discipline, appear to converge through the inspired expressions of the Techno-Seduction exhibition. Realization of an intimate creative alliance, reflected in this evocative catalogue, suggests an imminent cultural convergence of long-sought, transforming import.