VA 6330 - Curating

Credits: 3

Description This graduate course examines the role of curators, both within and without institutions, and explores the strategies and approaches that inform and shape their work. Combining theoretical discourse with hands-on experience, the course asks how curatorial decisions and practices can frame and even revise our understanding of art history. We will discuss the processes involved in curating, from conceiving ideas to turning them into reality, including fundraising, installation, exhibition-related publications, educational programs, and conservation. Students will develop an understanding of the methods available to curators for researching, organizing, and expressing art historical questions in the context of an exhibition, and will develop their own exhibition proposals in consideration of social, political, and economic factors in today’s globalized and digitized cultural environment. Teachers in art and other fields will find this course especially relevant.