Courses

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

When working on a project for an exhibition, it is in the curator's best interest to reflect and speculate on the imagined aesthetic experience that the participants may likely go through when the exhibition is presented to them. In philosophy, phenomenology is the tradition that has most systematically explored the issue of experience (its conditions of possibility, its nature and scope, its relation to our subjective powers, etc.). By engaging in a discussion of foundational phenomenological texts in the phenomenological, this seminar will explore a series of issues in the phenomenology of art and aesthetic experience. Following the thread of a question that joins the essays, we will be examining art as revelation—or in the form of two interrelated questions: What is it that that art reveals? If there is truth in art, what kind of truth is it? This will lead us to other important problems both for the philosopher of art and for the curator: our relation, bodily and otherwise, to space and the world; the nature, functioning and historicity of perception, memory, imagination and phantasy; and the constitution of our physical and “pathological” body (our body as a place of affections and as a symbolic, historical and cultural reality). Note that this is a philosophy course, not an art history or curating course. Yet the subject of this seminar will bear directly on your practice as a curator: As participants in an exhibition immediately enter into a singular relationship with what the exhibition presents to them, the curator must be conscious of the manner in which our subjective powers, objects and the exhibition space itself are, always and necessarily, dynamically intertwined.

Practicum: Logic and Rhetoric (six-week course)

This practicum will be a formal introduction to logic and rhetoric, founded in the classical canon. It is commonplace in art practices to talk about “conceptualism” and the concepts that are the basis of works of art, particularly in the post-Duchampian era. However, the foundational ideas of what concepts are and the way logical structures and rhetorical arguments undergird the formation and expression of a concept are largely unexamined. Through readings and exercises, students will examine logical rules for concepts, classification, and definition, as well as how to construct arguments using Aristotelian syllogistic logic and modern symbolic systems. By acquainting students with the basics of logic and rhetoric, this course will provide a background that will help curatorial practitioners rigorously address the practice of concept formation as it relates to artists’ works and to their own formulations of exhibitions and other curatorial expressions.

Practicum: Research Methodologies (four-week course)

In this practicum, students will examine art-historical research methods through scholarly investigation of an exhibition (historical or contemporary). Working independently and in collaboration, students will seek out primary and secondary resources from diverse repositories, demonstrate investigative skills, and present their research in the form of a descriptive bibliography and a brief presentation.

Workshop: Exhibition-Making (three-week course)

This workshop is specifically designed to familiarize first-year students with every aspect of the preparation, installation, and deinstallation of exhibitions in our CP Projects Space. Beginning with a brief review of previous exhibitions in the space, the workshop will cover our equipment, preparing the space, using our movable walls, hanging artworks, working with projectors, sound, lighting, completing loan forms and condition reports, writing texts and labels, and creating documentation.

History Seminar: Modern and Contemporary Art

Spanning canonical art-historical movements from 1900 to today, this course considers fundamental stylistic and conceptual milestones in the Euro-American artistic tradition. Special attention will be given to theoretical and critical readings that shaped the discourse around artistic practices and their reception. Along with formal, material, and technical considerations, we will trace significant developments in art as they relate to parallel social, cultural, ideological, and philosophical currents. Movements and styles under review include Dada, Cubism, Constructivism, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, Color Field Painting, Fluxus, Minimalism, Conceptualism, Dematerialization, Serial Art, Process, Site-specificity, Land Art, Earthworks, Postmodernism, Appropriation Art, Performance, Video and New Media, Institutional Critique, Relational Aesthetics, Social Practice, Post-Contemporary, and Post-internet Art.

Case Study Seminar: Curating Digital Art Through Network, Gallery, and Public Space (seven-week course)

This course gives an overview of curatorial models for digital art, ranging from approaches to online exhibitions to models for presenting (networked) digital art in museums and galleries, at festivals, or in outdoor spaces. The curation of digital art is now commonly understood as an engagement with a variety of aspects of the production, presentation, and reception of the work of art. Through weekly case studies and readings, students engage with challenges of and best practices for the presentation of digital art in various contexts; audience engagement and educational materials; organizational structures and funding as well as exhibition documentation. The exhibition history of digital art and changes that have occurred in presenting the work throughout the decades will also be discussed.

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

One of the ways to determine that a curated exhibition has been done “right” is through careful reflection on one's experience of the objects in the exhibition space and the space itself. Inevitably, though, such reflection must focus not only on the objects themselves and the multiple contexts (visible or invisible, implicit or explicit, in short: the world) from which they appear and signify, but also on the subjective powers that make all aesthetic experience possible: our consciousness, memory, perception, sensible body, affective and linguistic constitution, pre-given forms of knowledge operating through our capacity to give meaning to things, etc. Thus, when working on a project for an exhibition, it is in the curator's best interest to reflect and speculate on the imagined aesthetic experience that the participants may likely go through when the exhibition is presented to them. In philosophy, the tradition that has most systematically explored the issue of experience (its conditions of possibility, its nature and scope, its relation to our subjective powers, etc.) is phenomenology. By engaging into a discussion of foundational texts in the phenomenological tradition, this seminar will critically explore a series of issues in the phenomenology of art and aesthetic experience, following the thread of a question that joins all the essays we will be examining: art as revelation (or in the form of two interrelated questions: What is it that that art reveals? and If there is truth in art, what kind of truth is it?). Addressing this fascinating issue will lead us to many other meaningful and important problems both for the philosopher of art as well as for the curator: our relation, bodily and otherwise, to space and the world, the nature, functioning, and historicity of perception, memory, imagination, and phantasy, the constitution of our physical and "patho-logical" body (our body as a place of affections and as a symbolic, historical, and cultural reality), and so on. Note that this is a philosophy course, not an art history, or curating course. Yet the subject of this seminar will bear directly on your practice as a curator: as participants in an exhibition immediately enter into a singular relationship to what the exhibition presents to them, the curator must be conscious of the manner in which our subjective powers, objects, and the exhibition space itself are, always and necessarily, dynamically intertwined.

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

Every week a curator or institution director visits to discuss a current project. The presenters come from all over the world, work across all disciplines, and represent different kinds of institutions and practices. The format is informal and intimate; each presentation is followed by a reception that allows students to interact with guests and develop a growing professional network.

Workshop in Critical Writing: Exhibition Analysis

Each week, students must write a 500-word review as a curatorial analysis of a museum exhibition that gives ample evidence of the curatorial argument for the show, aspects of exhibition design that clearly manifest the argument, and other manifestations (catalog, online presence, conference, workshops) worth noting. This is a good way to visit museum exhibitions on a weekly basis in the city and learn to analyze exhibitions for their curatorial work—not for the art itself, but for the presentation of the art. Each review must exhibit clean writing, strong argument, and proper use of syntax, grammar, and punctuation.

Workshops in Professional Practices (seven-week course)

These intensive weekly workshops address a variety of technical and professional skills, ranging from installation and lighting design to making effective presentations. The focus of the workshops is to prepare students with basic understandings of skills they will need themselves as curators or to be able to more effectively work with professional collaborators in curatorial settings.

CP Exhibition

For the CP Projects Space exhibition, an exhibition plan must be presented to the program chair for approval. This includes the following components: a full description in writing of the concept of the exhibition, a checklist of artists and the works to be included in the exhibition, an installation plan of the works in the CP Projects Space, a budget for the exhibition, all wall labels for works, a wall text that summarizes the exhibition for viewers and a press release. Installation and deinstallation of the exhibition must be successfully completed by the curatorial fellow. All requirements are to be fulfilled with the oversight of the department chair and administrative staff.

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

This course takes as its starting point an expanded notion of what curating is. Beyond just exhibition making, there are numerous ways in which a curatorial practice takes shape. Together we’ll explore the notion of “programming” as a way to understand how, why and for whom contemporary art exists and is shaped by curators, contexts and constituents. Through site visits we will observe and interrogate firsthand a range of ways that programming responds to different ideals and realities, to the discourse of contemporary art itself, as well as to diverse artists and audiences.

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

The purpose of this course is to understand contemporary art as a distinct historical period and why the closing of this period seems marked by the threat of imminent catastrophe. It is not a coincidence that this has also been a time marked by the reformatting and redeployment of history and historical tropes on the one hand, but also a shift in the use of memory and progressive thinking towards economic and informational ends. How have inertia and cyclical time been redeployed in the contemporary period as the time of finance and of the museum? This course looks at historical precedents and theoretical formulations to better understand how these changes have come about, but also takes for granted that their effects are becoming increasingly bizarre—demanding that we cast a very wide and often scattershot net across many disciplines in order to make sense of their movements.

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

This seminar is designed to meet two main objectives. First, to ground students in select yet defining histories of art since the Second World War and explore those legacies in discourses of 21st-century art. Second, to place established art theories in dialogue with artistic incongruities across culturally disparate but simultaneous histories. Within a transnational frame, a variety of concerns will be addressed, including abstraction, realism, decolonialism, minimalism, conceptualism, the archive, identity, body and performance, capital, witnessing, empathy and solidarity. We will consider whether certain theoretical positions are germane to specific art-historical episodes of artists; how the project of trying to write the “other” into the canonical record is different from the project of Empire; and if art changed in fundamental ways after the Second World War, then how does the pivot differ when we look across borders? This seminar requires students to reckon with foundational ideas, grasp historiographical shifts across South-North and East-West, and draw on the lessons of artists and artworks of post-1945 art histories to grapple with contemporary artistic concerns.

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

This course explores how the increasingly central role of the moving image in contemporary art is articulated through a wide range of different curatorial models and structures, including solo exhibitions and commissions in alternative spaces, major historical and contemporary exhibitions in museums, biennials, site-specific projects, screenings, expanded cinema events and collective and conceptual practices. The course addresses the key role of artists of color and Indigenous artists in shaping the history of the moving image, and traces how film and video’s intersection with other mediums and disciplines, including performance, dance, cinema, and sound, shapes curatorial scholarship and exhibition-making. It also examines how the material fluidity of the moving image creates a uniquely open set of practical and philosophical possibilities, including the formation of new global, postcolonial curatorial structures.

Practicum: Exhibition-Making

This practicum is required for all first-year students to review the fundamentals of traditional exhibition-making. The course offers participants a platform for debate, exploration and experimentation in curatorial practice, and encourages interdisciplinary thinking as a way of addressing the expanded role of the curator beyond the traditional art world nexus. With the guidance of the lead instructor and the participation of visiting experts in areas discussed, students will consider practical issues of curating, such as studio visits with artists, exhibition planning and related software, exhibition design and installation, lighting, art handling, transportation and insurance, registration and condition reports, all aspects of budgeting, commissioning and fundraising, as well as such topics as ancillary program development, exhibition outreach and marketing, online development, tools and methods of documentation, and de-installation.

Curatorial Roundtable: Visiting International Curators Program

Every week a curator or institution director visits to discuss a current project. The presenters come from all over the world, work across all disciplines, and represent different kinds of institutions and practices. The format is informal and intimate; each presentation is followed by a reception that allows students to interact with guests and develop a growing professional network.

Art Practice

The Curatorial Practice program intends to fully immerse its students in the world in which they will advance their careers as professional curators. Central to this world are the artists whose works provide the content of exhibitions and other curatorial projects. In order to fully value this work, students will try their hands as art practitioners by enrolling in a studio art course of their choosing at the undergraduate level (unless otherwise approved for graduate level). Ongoing critiques by their instructor and classmates will be given. By the end of the course, students will have a deeper understanding of the techniques, materials, conceptual challenges and risks of being a working artist. This will contribute directly to their curatorial practices and collaborations with artists.

CP Exhibition

For the CP Projects Space exhibition, an exhibition plan must be presented to the program chair for approval. This includes the following components: a full description in writing of the concept of the exhibition, a checklist of artists and the works to be included in the exhibition, an installation plan of the works in the CP Projects Space, a budget for the exhibition, all wall labels for works, a wall text that summarizes the exhibition for viewers and a press release. Installation and deinstallation of the exhibition must be successfully completed by the curatorial fellow. All requirements are to be fulfilled with the oversight of the department chair and administrative staff.

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

Curatorial practices can be defined as meta- and micro-narratives that investigate the very idea of narrating, as well as its forms and procedures. In that sense, “the curatorial” activates a script that uses the assembly and accumulation of meanings across different subjects, texts and ideas. During this course, we will analyze different exhibitions and projects that discuss techniques for performing documentation as well as possible exhibition displays that use sound, movement, architecture, poetry, images, storytelling, letters and voices as new forms of mediation that can substitute or complement the traditional curatorial text as an explanatory device. Mixing modes of artistic research and more traditional fields of theoretical research, we will articulate processes of meaning-making in the curatorial field in a hybrid manner: ranging from multi-sensorial, aesthetic, associative, affective, spatial and visual modes of knowledge to more discursive, analytical, contextualized ones. Participants will be invited to work on their own research and experiment with different materials to build a visual essay that can take a physical shape in space, a text, or a lecture performance.

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

This course provides a focused introduction to the logistical, ethical, historical, and theoretical concerns encountered when curating performance art in the context of museums and other arts organizations. Discussions will examine such issues as: the critical stance of live art in object-oriented institutions, the ethics of labor in delegated performance, modes of public engagement and community activation, the role of objects and installations as traces of live events, and the challenges involved in bringing performance into museum collections. In each session, real-world advice based on the instructor’s professional experience will be coupled with analysis of key artworks and exhibitions, as well as close readings of theoretical texts.

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

Taught by an architect, this course uses historical and contemporary examples to examine the expanded field of exhibition-making in the 21st century. The complex, dynamic, and productive relationships between exhibitions and their sites will be explored as the class tackles the challenges and opportunities of found or made space, site specificity, site neutrality, object specificity, temporality, and media. Using images, videos, and texts, students will conduct independent research on exhibitions and their sites and visit shows, performances, and events throughout the New York area. Guest lecturers will include artists, curators, exhibition designers, and other architects. Curatorial exercises dedicated to the reconciliation of space and art using conventional artworks, design pieces, time-based works, and performance, as well as consideration of the virtual exhibition space, will be an essential element of the course.

Artists Roundtable (seven-week course)

To complement the Curatorial Roundtable, the third semester of the program will focus on meetings with leading artists, architects and designers in New York City. This course will take place in the classroom, as well as in studios, galleries and museums around the city. Working toward an increased knowledge of curatorial issues from the artist’s perspective, students will participate in a series of conversations with guests to discuss their work, their exhibition experiences, and what they seek and expect from their relationships with curators.

Independent Curatorial Plan

Under the supervision of the Review Committee, comprised of the department chair, faculty member, institutional mentor, and external examiner, students will create and formally present the plan of their final exhibition/curatorial project. Putting into practice their refined research and writing skills, along with the cumulative knowledge of the case study seminars and practicums, they will draft the plan for their project, from its concept through proposed artists, works and budget, and any ancillary programming. Students are encouraged to work with artists from other SVA graduate programs for inclusion in exhibitions and various curatorial projects. The plan must be approved by the Review Committee.

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

Every week a curator or institution director visits to discuss a current project. The presenters come from all over the world, work across all disciplines, and represent different kinds of institutions and practices. The format is informal and intimate; each presentation is followed by a reception that allows students to interact with guests and develop a growing professional network.

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

This course situates the museum as a site of spectacle while charting a recent shift in curatorial practice. It begins by examining the oftentimes hidden systems of knowledge and structures of power embedded in activities such as collection formation, exhibition-making, and public engagement. Further sessions introduce select feminist texts toward re-envisioning the civic gaze of museums. We consider curatorially driven pivots to combating patriarchy, colonialism, ableism, and privilege toward uplifting minoritarian histories, queer belonging, and inclusive world-making. This course is intended to rethink and complicate institutional-building as bound up with institutional critique. Bringing together objects, artists, and audiences, how can today's curators construct a dynamic conversation around the museum as a social space? The syllabus includes weekly readings, short assignments, group discussions, and developing a curatorial proposal as a practice of care. Site visits and guest speakers accompany some sessions.

Workshop in Critical Writing: The Catalog Essay

In conjunction with their final exhibition/curatorial project, students will write a full-length catalog essay. For this workshop, they will consider the possible approaches the essay should take; the fields of information and ideas it should include and exclude; what audience it might reach, and the relationship between the essay and its audience; and the demands of the catalog essay as a form. Throughout the semester, students will write the essay while working with the instructor as a writer works with an editor.

Curatorial Roundtable: Visiting International Curators Program

Every week a curator or institution director visits to discuss a current project. The presenters come from all over the world, work across all disciplines, and represent different kinds of institutions and practices. The format is informal and intimate; each presentation is followed by a reception that allows students to interact with guests and develop a growing professional network.

Final Exhibition/Curatorial Project

Students finalize all aspects of their exhibition/curatorial project plan, prepare and install, or otherwise present their work for critique, along with any ancillary activities. Curatorial projects will take place in SVA venues and in public spaces located throughout New York City. The final project is intended to demonstrate each student’s learning, development, use of practicum methods, intelligence, and creativity toward the realization of curatorial work that meets high professional standards. The presentation of the final project, along with the submission of the catalog essay and the plan for any ancillary activities, will complete the requirements to earn the master’s degree. The record of this final work, along with the successful completion of the full curriculum, will also demonstrate the professional level of knowledge—inclusive of practical, historical, and theoretical aspects—that students have gained and can bring to their work as advanced practitioners in the field.