SVA MA Curatorial Practice
132 West 21st Street, 10th floor
New York, NY 10011
Chus Martinez, Adam Weinberg, Tania Bruguera, Sofia Hernandez Chong Cuy, Maria Lind, Shirin Neshat, Hou Hanru, Daniel Kunitz, Huma Bhabha, Jens Hoffmann, Alvarro Rodriguez Fominaya, Joan Jonas, Mick Wilson, Pablo Helguera, Brian Kuan Wood, Saskia Bos, Joshua Decter, Dara Birnbaum, Mark Beasley, Matthew Israel, Kate Fowle, Charles Renfro, Raimundas Malasauskas, Alexandra Munroe, Stéphane Aquin, and Nato Thompson: These are among the many brilliant international curators, museum directors, artists, writers, and theorists who are teaching, speaking as guest lecturers, and running workshops this academic year in our remarkable Masters program in curating here in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood. Our collaborations with Swiss Institute, Independent Curators International, Residency Unlimited, Triangle Workshop, artinfo.com, and other international institutions lead directly to exhibitions and publications that our students add to their professional CVs. Internships at MoMA, MoMA PS1, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Brooklyn Museum, The Kitchen, Walker Art Center, SALT in Istanbul, NTU Centre for Contemporary Art in Singapore, and many other leading institutions have taken place and continue. We train curators with a hands-on approach, working directly with leading practitioners, making exhibitions and other curatorial ventures, delving into history and theory while offering thorough practical training. Our space, designed by renowned architect Charles Renfro of Diller Scofidio + Renfro in association with Leong Leong, hosts classes, exhibitions, and much more.
Two special upcoming events exemplify our interests. Both are free and open to the public. On November 5 at 7pm in our Chelsea space at 132 West 21st Street, 10th floor, New York, NY, we will host a discussion titled “Spectator Under Siege,” featuring a panel of international curators including Sofia Hernandez Chong Cuy, Jens Hoffmann, Maria Lind, and Raimundas Malasauskas, moderated by Steven Henry Madoff, chair of the program.
“Spectator Under Siege”
November 5, 2015, 7pm
It is now commonplace to speak about the deluge of visuality in the age of the Internet. The overwhelming circulation of images, and the use of images and objects as signs and containers of subjectivities for localized and universal consumption at relentless scale and speed, are considerations of general social analysis and complaint—and yet exhibition makers have paid little consideration in their actual practices to what this fact of contemporary visual economy means for its audiences. (Take, for example, the chronic elephantiasis of biennials boasting hundreds of artists and artworks to be viewed in forms of spectatorial tourism.) The questions of aura, essence, surface, and agency have been orbiting the matter of reception for decades, even centuries, but it is time to confront what the curatorial task of image economy means under current and future conditions of massification and numerousness. This is a politics of curating, with the viewer as an ethically tested—and in some senses aggrieved—subject, not merely a recipient of consumerist privilege. What, essentially, are we doing to viewers, as well as for and with them? Are the goals of the collection and display of visual things any different today? How must we now address the reign of visuality?
To register to attend this free, public panel discussion on November 5 at 7pm, click here. At approximately 8:30pm, after the panel discussion, there will be a brief information session for anyone interested in the MA Curatorial Practice program and the application process. You can sign up for the info session separately by clicking here.
“Women Speaking to Power: An Evening of Conversation with Tania Bruguera and Shirin Neshat”
December 11
On December 11, we will host “Women Speaking to Power: An Evening of Conversation with Tania Bruguera and Shirin Neshat.” Two of the most significant contemporary artists in the world today, they will speak with each other about their experiences as citizens and artists whose works consider gender, politics, their respective homelands (Cuba and Iran), and beyond. To register to attend this free public event at the SVA Theatre at 333 West 23rd Street, New York, NY, click here.
Come join us. See our site for all details about our program at macp.sva.edu.
