Curating the Contemporary: 2019 Curatorial Summer School in Rome

Goldsmiths Department of Art and the British School at Rome (BSR) are pleased to announce the 2019 Curatorial Summer School entitled Curating the Contemporary.

The Summer School is aimed at people who are interested in the professional field of curating and takes place in July 2019 at the prestigious British School at Rome. We are looking for entrants from a mix of backgrounds but particularly graduates and artists who are considering working in curating as well as established curators who want to think and talk about the challenges and opportunities that face curators in the contemporary moment.

The course will provide participants with an opportunity to engage intensively with the activity of curating contemporary art, one that produces exhibitions and events within an expanded field that includes commercial and public galleries, museums and foundations, but also public spaces and social contexts. It will investigate various modes of curating contemporary art, as well as in the expanded sense of the philosophical idea of the curatorial as it is currently discussed in the field.

Course programme
The summer school will be directed by Dr. Simon Sheikh who heads the world-leading MFA in Curating course at Goldsmiths, University of London, and will be based on its ethos of mixing theory and practice, while enabling participants to engage with our extensive professional networks in the field of contemporary curating.

We will look at curating through the crucial phases of conceptualization, realization and mediation, taking on board the role of the curator, the ethics of working with artists, the process of identifying current themes and methods in contemporary art, the principles and pragmatics of installation, and the politics of exhibition making today. Through lectures, presentations, site visits, assignments and discussions, the group will work on formulating how they place and see themselves as curators, and what this means in terms of productivity and articulation, but also care-taking and collaborations.

We will make site visits to a number of spaces in Rome, taking in the full palette of possibilities, from museum and foundations, to commercial galleries and alternative spaces. Participants will also be supplied with a specifically assembled reader in curating and contemporary art, and will have lectures form a number of leading practitioners in the field.

Over the course of the two weeks, participants will have the opportunity to meet and learn from many of the leading curators and theorists of contemporary art and to be introduced to important professional networks within the field of contemporary curating. Some of our past speakers include: Jochen Becker, Iwona Blazwick, Melanie Bouteloup, Cecilia Canzani, Ele Carpenter, Paolo Do, Ilaria Gianni, Carles Guerra, Hou Hanru, Maria Hlavajova, Sarah McCrory, Richard Noble, Cesare Pietrouisti, Helena Reckitt, Beatrix Ruf, Katya Sander, and Adrian Searle.

The final programme will be confirmed on the May 31, 2019.

Location
The British School at Rome is just north of Rome’s Centro Storico (historic centre) in the Valle Giulia. This area, less than ten minutes walk from Piazza del Popolo, is home to the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna and the Museo Nazionale Etrusco di Villa Giulia. View directions to the British School at Rome.

How to apply
The summer school will take place on Tuesday, July 1 through Tuesday, July 15, 2019. Please visit our website for more details.

To apply, please email your CV and a short statement of interest (100–200 words) to shortcourses@gold.ac.uk with the subject title of the email: 2019 Curatorial Summer School.

Price
There is an Early Bird offer for limited places (2,500 GBP) for applications received by the February 14, 2019. There are three options to book on the course. Two options include accommodation and meals at the BSR: The standard rooms are twin rooms (with an overall course cost of 2,950 GBP), however there are limited single rooms you can book with a single room supplement of 35 GBP per night, with an overall course cost of 3,405 GBP.

If you are located in Rome there is also an option to join the course without accommodation and meals included, which costs 2,300 GBP. You will be able to select one of these options when paying your deposit for your place on the course.

Any questions about the summer school can be sent to shortcourses@gold.ac.uk.