Course description
Modern visual culture offers challenges and opportunities for the curator, whose responsibilities now include public art, performance and new media, and non-western visual culture. This raises issues about access, diversity and community self-fulfilment, and is important to the western world and to emerging nations who are developing their own cultural identity and presence.
This course is for graduates whose first degree dealt with the visual arts or culture. We also welcome mature professionals working in the cultural industry who want to reflect on their practice or shift their focus to curation.
The course’s flexibility can easily cater for people whose commitments prevent them from undertaking the one year full-time alternative.
You learn about • the history of museums and galleries • organisation and management • understanding organisations • policies and strategies. All these topics impact on curating visual culture today. We also equip you to commission and do research in the field.
We support the taught modules with visits to cultural sites, talks from expert speakers and opportunities for placements. And we stress practical work in your assessment.
Your studies explore the curator’s role in the traditional museum and gallery and developments in modern visitor attractions where interaction and plural histories are the focus, rather than the artefact.
Many sites now compete for the curator’s attention as visual culture and its display finds significance in a wide range of spaces. These spaces include • shopping centres • community buildings • hospitals • schools • industrial sites • city streets. And the present-day curator’s responsibilities are no longer limited to exhibiting, but are likely to include areas of education, marketing and access.
Associated careers
Graduates of this course are likely to find work in • gallery management • museum and gallery exhibition planning and management • visual arts marketing • running an independent private art gallery • working with the visual arts in community projects, social welfare and education.
Course content
Modules
• cultural policy • current issues in cultural policy and management • management of cultural organisations • research methods and skills for the cultural sector • dissertation
