MA Curatorial Practice – The School of Visual Arts

The two-year Master of Arts degree in Curatorial Practice (CP) focuses on professional training, with a thorough grounding in history, research, and theory. Merit-based partial tuition scholarships are available, as are partial matching funds for outside scholarships and limited research assistantships. Hands-on work with experts in the field, professional networking, and the foremost goal of placing graduates in curatorial jobs are at the heart of the program. Based in Chelsea, CP takes full advantage of New York’s arts institutions and professionals, providing countless prospects for study, mentoring, and professional development. Our faculty work in major New York institutions, while visiting international curators, museum and gallery professionals, and artists engage with us on a weekly basis. Building a global network of professional connections is an integral part of the program.

Program
The curriculum is founded on a series of practicums in every aspect of exhibition-making and other forms of knowledge production and presentation, case-study seminars, writing workshops, and programmatic engagements with professionals who meet with the students as a group and individually. Specialized training in research methodologies initiates the program, while second-year students enter into mentorship and internship programs, graduating after completion of a final curatorial project. CP final projects are exhibited in New York art spaces, open to the public, and online. Internships take place with New York, national, and international institutional partners. Students have the enormous resources at their disposal of more than twenty graduate programs at SVA to draw work and collaborators from, as well as the vast facilities of the school that include studios, workshops, galleries, laboratories, and libraries. New York’s art, design, film, and performance worlds are all around us.

Faculty
Among the extraordinary faculty and faculty-at-large are Matthew Higgs, director, White Columns; Claire Gilman, curator, The Drawing Center; Hou Hanru, artistic director, MAXXI, National Gallery of 21st Century Art, Rome; Manon Slome, president and chief curator, No Longer Empty; David Frankel, editorial director, the Museum of Modern Art; Daniel Birnbaum, director, Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Charlotte Cohen, fine arts officer, urban developer manager, U.S. General Services Administration; Tim Griffin, director and chief curator, The Kitchen, and former editor in chief, Artforum; Chus Martinez, director, Institute of Aesthetic Practice and Theory, Academy of Arts and Design, Basel; David A. Ross, former director of the Whitney Museum of American Art and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Ana Paula Cohen, independent curator, São Paulo; Richard Flood, curator-at-large, The New Museum; Charles Renfro, principal, Diller Scofidio + Renfro; Jennifer Tobias, librarian, the Museum of Modern Art; Daniel Kunitz, editor in chief, Modern Painters; Jovana Stokic, deputy chair, SVA MA Curatorial Practice and former curator, Location One; and Steven Henry Madoff, chair, SVA MA Curatorial Practice.

Facilities
Our facilities on West 21st Street are designed by leading architect Charles Renfro of Diller Scofidio + Renfro, in collaboration with architectural practice Leong Leong. Purpose-built for CP, seminar, gallery, and study spaces offer students a technologically sophisticated study environment that also serves as an international hub for curators from around the world.

Rolling admissions
We are accepting applications now. Applicants with a prior background in curatorial work are particularly encouraged, as are art historians and artists whose enterprises are relevant to advanced work in today’s expansive curatorial field. Visit us online at macp.sva.edu for more information about the program and to apply.

On March 4, we are holding two information sessions about the program via Google Hangout: noon–1pm and 6–7pm EST. Space is limited to nine people per session.
Register here: Curatorial Practice info sessions

The School of Visual Arts

MA Curatorial Practice
132 West 21st Street
10th floor
New York, NY 10010
macp.sva.edu

Tel: 212.592.2274
Email: macp@sva.edu