Curatorial Research Bureau

California College of the Arts (CCA) and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) announce the official launch of Curatorial Research Bureau (CRB). Located at YBCA, CRB is a hybrid bookshop, learning site, exhibition and public program platform. The space serves as the new home of CCA’s Graduate Program in Curatorial Practice, chaired by art historian and curator James Voorhies. We invite you to join us for the opening celebration of CRB on Thursday, September 27, 2018, from 6–8pm. RSVP here

“We’re pleased to be the home of the Curatorial Research Bureau as a point of engagement for our vibrant art community,” remarks Deborah Cullinan, YBCA’s CEO. “As we move toward our 25th anniversary, this powerful partnership with CCA exemplifies our commitment to our local arts ecosystem.”

As a bookshop, CRB offers over 500 titles on art, design, architecture, poetry, film, and critical theory by writers, publishers, and cultural institutions from around the world. The inventory is provided in part by Berlin-based publisher and distributor Motto Books, with direction around particular themes, ideas, and artists occupying the attention of the Bay Area community at a given moment. The inventory also reflects the cultural, urban, and academic contexts of the Bay Area and California with books by local and regional writers, publishers, and artists.

As a learning site, CRB provides a dynamic environment for training curators. CCA graduate seminars are held at CRB, where students intersect with continually evolving book inventories, participate in programs, and meet visiting practitioners from the Bay Area and beyond. Students are also integrated into the institutional infrastructure at YBCA by sitting in on planning meetings and bearing witness to conversations among curators and administrators about upcoming exhibitions, programs, marketing, and more. The move to YBCA is an effort to reposition the Curatorial Practice program and project the pedagogy outside the traditional walls of the academy by taking advantage of the rich cultural context of the Bay Area and recognizing it as an essential part of graduate studies at CCA.

CCA’s Graduate Program in Curatorial Practice focuses on the intellectual, creative, and analytic qualities needed to participate in and contribute to the discourse of contemporary art. This program offers students opportunities to work with leading practitioners in the field, this year includes Dena Beard, Sara Dean, Michele Carlson, Claudia La Rocco, Christina Linden, James Voorhies, and introduces Swedish curator Maria Lind as the inaugural Curator-in-Residence. Through the combination of faculty expertise and pedagogical experiences, CCA students gain a broad perspective of the curator as a productive agent and mediator.

CRB’s event programming offers four models—AfterWord, Open Seminar, Call + Response, and Case Studies—that serve as primary means to contextualize topics engaging CCA and Bay Area communities. AfterWord is an intimate, by-invitation gathering with visiting arts practitioners for in-depth discussions following their larger public events at CCA and Bay Area institutions. Open Seminar allows for the public to participate in academic seminars conducted by CCA’s Graduate Program in Curatorial Practice. Call + Response events bring cultural producers in the fields of design, architecture, humanities, civic affairs, urban planning, and more to share their ideas and work in the public realm for open dialogue. Finally, a rotating series of Case Studies identifies a book to unfurl into an exhibition of archival materials, photographic reproductions, periodicals, ephemera, sound, and text that amplify ideas explored by the featured publication. 

For more information on upcoming CRB events, please visit: curatorialresearchbureau.org

The Curatorial Research Bureau is made possible with funding and support from California College of the Arts and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and is produced by Bureau for Open Culture, in collaboration with Motto Books.