MA Curating and Collections 2024 programme

The renowned MA Curating and Collections course at Chelsea College of Arts, under the new leadership of Dr Lina Dzuverovic, announces a new and highly collaborative direction, centered on principles of mutual support and cooperation through fostering sustainable, ethical and long-term partnerships with organisations across the contemporary art landscape. The first cohort to enjoy this innovative approach, the class of 2024, has been working in close collaboration with Artangel, Chelsea Space, The October Salon, The Mosaic Rooms, Peer, Tate Britain and CREAM, University of Westminster.

On this fifteen-month programme students learn directly from professionals across the sector, enjoying unique access to art and design archives and collections, alongside collaborations with practicing artists. Our course is committed to developing ethical curatorial practice through embedding UAL’s Principles for Climate, Social and Racial Justice within teaching and practice.

Drawing on the richness and diversity of the international student body, we learn from each other in Curatorial Labs, a pioneering new research-led approach, working with objects from the ILEA Collection, the Her Noise Archive, the Non-Aligned Movement Solidarity Archive and contributing to the live project And Others: The Gendered Politics and Practices of Art Collectives. Exploring power relations at play in the processes of knowledge production, archiving and collecting, the First Plinth exhibition, explored journeys, the confluence of personal and political archives, the history of British modernism through design, while investigating invisible and reproductive labour in art collectives.

Weekly Curatorial Knowledge, Collections Curating and Professional Practice seminars, engage students with theoretical and practical aspects of curating led by practicing curators including Dr Kirsten Cooke, Dr Lina Dzuverovic, Dr Karen Di Franco, Lily Hall, Hana Noorali, Dr Irene Revell, Lynton Talbot, the team from UAL Special Collections and Archives. Guest speakers have included Cédric Fauq (Chief Curator/Head of Projects, Capc—Musée d’Art Contemporain de Bordeaux), iLiana Fokianaki (Director kunsthalle bern / State of Concept Athens), Victor Wang (Artistic Director and Chief Curator M Woods, Beijing) Linsey Young (Tate), among many others.  

Recent student-led projects include Improvising Antiphony at Chelsea Space connected with Tate Britain’s exhibition Women in Revolt! and the associated conference in March 2024, while our close relationship with MA Fine Art led to the exhibition ‘Indigestion’ held at Millbank Tower, showcasing new and recent installation and performance work by students.

Forthcoming MA Curating and Collections student projects continue with LINGERING ON THE THRESHOLD, July 1–6, 2024 at Chelsea College of Arts as part of the MA Degree Show. This exhibition features work from The Artangel Collection and the Collection of the October Salon featuring the work of Francis Alÿs, Sanja Andelković, Igor Bošnjak, Rachel Pimm & Graham Cunnington, Ben Rivers and Gregor Schneider. A follow up single screen programme will be premiered at the 60th October Salon, Belgrade, Serbia in October 2024. 

The class of 2024 will continue their programming through series of public events at Peer gallery, comprising panel discussions, workshops and off-site projects, accompanying A Radical Duet, the first major solo exhibition in a London institution by London-based artist, Onyeka Igwe, Peer Gallery, Friday September 27–December 14, 2024. Working with film and installation, Igwe’s exhibition takes as its starting point the year of 1947, when London was a hub of radical anti-colonial activity. 

A publication entitled Honey–Moon: Notes from under the dining table marks the collaboration with the Mosaic Rooms and departs from experiences of displacement to focus on food as a resistant language. With new contributions from a diverse group of artists including chefs and musicians that playfully reflect a common thread of caring—for oneself, for others or for the world around us—the publication will have a launch event in October 2024.

Contact: l.dzuverovic [​at​] arts.ac.uk.