Williams College is receiving an impressive gift of contemporary works from the collection of anti-virus software developer Peter Norton, a trove of 68 works including pieces by Tracy Emin, Allan Ruppersberg, and Christopher Wool, among others. (more…)

New York state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has launched an investigation into the financial decision-making at Cooper Union in New York, where protests and lawsuits erupted following the school’s decision to charge tuition after nearly two hundred years of offering free college education to admitted students.  (more…)

An article in the New Statesman takes a hard look at the state of British art schools this week, noting tuition fees higher than anywhere else in Europe, and a change in the curriculum that has changed how students practice, both of which have limited access to education for lower income classes and discouraged Britain’s famously egalitarian higher education system. (more…)

Goldsmith’s London has announced plans to build a public art gallery on the University’s South London campus, repurposing the old water tanks of the Laurie Grove Baths.  To raise funds, the institution is asking many former pupils for donations and works to auction in support of the project, including Sarah Lucas, Damien Hirst and Antony Gormley. (more…)

A group of professors, admitted students and alumni from the Cooper Union have filed a lawsuit against the school’s Board of Trustees, in an attempt to halt the charging of tuition against students next fall, and to force an investigation into how the board has handled the school’s finances over the past several years.  “The Board of Trustees has permitted the school to engage in numerous financial transactions that bear no reasonable relationship to the educational purposes of The Cooper Union,” the lawsuit alleges. (more…)

The New York Times reviews The Cooper Union‘s current struggle to find solutions to their financial deficits.  While the famed art-educational institution has not charged tuition for over one hundred years, current budgetary issues have forced the school to re-evaluate its position.  Now, as a decision on charging undergraduate tuition nears, faculty, students and alumni are immersed in a fervent debate over the school’s future.  “There will be some tough decisions,” says president Jamshed Bharucha said. “There have to be. Because the model that has been in place cannot be sustained.” (more…)