diff --git a/pyproject.toml b/pyproject.toml
index 90491dc1..be1a08c8 100644
--- a/pyproject.toml
+++ b/pyproject.toml
@@ -9,7 +9,7 @@ description = "A little word cloud generator"
 readme = { file = "README.md", content-type = "text/markdown" }
 requires-python = ">=3.9"
 license = "MIT"
-dependencies = ["numpy>=1.19", "pillow", "matplotlib"]
+dependencies = ["numpy>=1.19.3", "pillow", "matplotlib"]
 dynamic = ["version"]
 
 [project.urls]
diff --git a/requirements.txt b/requirements.txt
index b6600922..be377bf5 100644
--- a/requirements.txt
+++ b/requirements.txt
@@ -1,4 +1,5 @@
 matplotlib>=1.5.3
-numpy>=1.6.1
+numpy>1.19.3; python_version >= '3.10'
+numpy==1.19.3; python_version == '3.9'
 pillow
-cython
\ No newline at end of file
+cython
diff --git a/wordcloud/wordcloud.py b/wordcloud/wordcloud.py
index 6d46e919..59743638 100644
--- a/wordcloud/wordcloud.py
+++ b/wordcloud/wordcloud.py
@@ -738,14 +738,22 @@ def to_array(self, copy=None):
         copy : bool
             If `True`, then the object is copied. If `None` then the object is copied
             only if needed. For `False` it raises a ValueError if a copy cannot be
-            avoided. Default: `None`.
+            avoided. Default: `None`. `copy` is passed directly to `np.asarray`
+            which is supported on NumPy>=2.0. For older NumPy versions `copy` is
+            ignored.
 
         Returns
         -------
         image : nd-array size (width, height, 3)
             Word cloud image as numpy matrix.
         """
-        return np.asarray(self.to_image(), copy=copy)
+        image = self.to_image()
+        if copy is None:
+            return np.asarray(image)
+        try:
+            return np.asarray(image, copy=copy)
+        except TypeError:
+            return np.asarray(image)
 
     def __array__(self, copy=None):
         """Convert to numpy array.