Above: Simon Roy Christensen, score for sucking stones. Performance in Otobong Nkanga, Taste of a Stone. IKO, 2017. Photo: Kåre Viemose. Courtesy of Kunsthal Aarhus.
Today, curating is not just concerned with visual arts; it is a cultural practice that spans numerous disciplines and cultural fields in contemporary society. MA Curating at Aarhus University reflects this diversity by promoting an interdisciplinary approach to curating which provides students with broad curatorial competences in cultural analysis, communications, management and enterprise.
When students receive training in these areas, it increases their confidence in communicating freely with their classmates. It may also enable them to pursue better opportunities in the future. For example, for those who want to become social media influencers using platforms like https://intellifluence.com/influencers and make a career out of it, programs that help with communication and management could be extremely beneficial.
MA Curating supports the professional training and development of people who curate in the widest interpretation of the term and aims to further develop curating as a new knowledge domain. It allows students to operate within and across a range of contemporary institutions that organise, manage, administer and disseminate exhibitions and events to the public. Providing an experimental space for the exchange of ideas and critical reflection, MA Curating combines methods drawn from the domains of art and design, criticism, aesthetics, cultural studies, information and media studies, sociology and philosophy.
Programme Structure
The programme is delivered through four modules of 15 ECTS that can be taken individually or sequentially over 2 years of part-time study. The courses are entitled Curatorial Theories, Curatorial Practice, Curatorial Knowledge and Curatorial Project (the Master’s project). The courses examine the theory and practice of curating from a range of interdisciplinary perspectives and are delivered through lectures, seminars, group work, self-study and peer-learning, further supported online.
The core teaching consists of extended weekend seminars in Aarhus and at key partner institutions. The first course, Curatorial Theories, will be taught in the autumn semester of 2018 over three long weekend sessions, two of which will take place in Aarhus and one in Liverpool. The programme is designed to be flexible to ease participation while maintaining a full-time job, and to enhance your career opportunities through exposure to new ideas, techniques and networks.
International Partners
MA Curating is conducted in English and places particular emphasis on external partners and on-going collaborative professional relationships between cultural and academic sectors both in Denmark and abroad. Underpinning this ambition is our partnership with Liverpool John Moores University’s MA Exhibition Studies, which has close links to Liverpool Biennial and Tate Liverpool (UK). Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (DK), Hasselblad Foundation in Gothenburg (SE), Kunsthal Aarhus (DK), ARoS Aarhus Art Museum (DK) and Transmediale/Festival for Art and Digital Culture Berlin (DE) are also among our core institutional partners, all of which we will visit as part of the programme. MA Curating is furthermore closely associated with the research project The Contemporary Condition at Aarhus University.
Staff
The programme’s core organising group consists of Trine Friis Sørensen, Jacob Lund, Magdalena Tyżlik-Carver, Geoff Cox, Lise Skytte Jakobsen and Jette Gejl Kristensen. Associated external staff include, among others, Lars Bang Larsen, Joasia Krysa, Judith Schwarzbart and Helga Just Christoffersen. Recent relevant visitors to Aarhus University programmes and events include Maria Lind, Peter Osborne, Raqs Media Collective, Terry Smith and Nina Möntmann.
Application deadline: May 1, 2018
Programme duration: September 2018–August 2020
For further information and to apply, please visit MA Curating
