Curate the World.

SVA’s MA Curatorial Practice program is unique in its intense focus on practical training for your professional career.

In the MA Curatorial Practice program (MACP) here at the School of Visual Arts in New York, curatorial studies students are immersed in two years of training with leading curators from major institutions in New York City and from around the world.

With hundreds of art galleries, prominent museums, and thousands of artists just minutes from our door, the program steeps our students in the extraordinary art life of the city, while offering thorough coursework in the practice, history, and theory of curating, delving into the most important issues of society and art today.

Technical training, opportunities to read deeply in the literature of curatorial studies and pertinent areas of philosophy and cultural analysis, writing workshops, and international internships provide our students with the professional tools they need to enter the field, conversant with the language and practice of curating, and having learned every aspect of creatively addressing audiences through curatorial expression. Students have the chance to make several exhibitions of their own in the program, all subsidized by us and under professional guidance from international experts.

Our Courses

  • Introductory Critique of Canonical 20th- and 21st-Century Texts (six-week course)

    Practicum: Logic and Rhetoric (six-week course)

    Practicum: Research Methodologies (four-week course)

    Workshop: Exhibition-Making (three-week course)

    History Seminar: Modern and Contemporary Art

    Case Study: Curating Technology-Based Art (seven-week course)

    Philosophy Seminar: Curatorial Practice, Body and World (seven-week course)

    Curatorial Roundtable I: Visiting International Curators Program (seven-week course)

    Workshop: Critical Writing–Exhibition Analysis

    Workshop: Professional Practices (seven-week course)

    Click Here to Read Course Descriptions

  • Case Study Seminar: Models of Thinking–Curating a Program (seven-week course)

    Case Study Seminar: History as Commodity–On the Contemporary (seven-week course)

    History Seminar: Post-1945 Transnationalism and the History of Art

    Case Study Seminar: Returning the Gaze: Models of Curating Film and Video in Contemporary Art (seven-week course)

    Practicum: Exhibition-Making

    Curatorial Roundtable II: Visiting International Curators Program

    Art Practice

    Click Here to Read Course Descriptions

  • Case Study Seminar: Hybrid Narratives: Curating Across Disciplines (seven-week course)

    Case Study Seminar: Performance and the Museum (seven-week course)

    Case Study Seminar: The Expanded Space of Art (seven-week course)

    Artists Roundtable (seven-week course)

    Curatorial Roundtable III: Visiting International Curators Program (seven-week course)

    Museum Studies and New Practices of Feminist Care (seven-week course)

    Click Here to Read Course Descriptions

  • Workshop: Critical Writing–The Catalog Essay (by appointment)

    Curatorial Roundtable IV: Visiting International Curators Program

    Final Exhibition/Curatorial Project

    Click Here to Read Course Descriptions

Some Institutions Where Alumni Work

and Have Worked

Americas Society

Asia Society Hong Kong Center

Berlin Biennale

bitforms gallery

Brooklyn Museum

Dia Art Foundation

e-flux

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden

ICA London

Independent Curators International

Inter-American Development Bank

Kuenstlerhaus Schloss Balmoral

Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst

MO.CO. Montpellier Contemporain

Museo Tamayo

National Academy of Design

NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA)

SculptureCenter

Socrates Sculpture Park

Sotheby’s

The Power Plant

The Shed

VIA Art Fund

Visions2030

Wave Hill

Upcoming Events