Final call for fall 2024 applications

Location: MA Curatorial Practice, School of Visual Arts, New York City.

About the MA Curatorial Practice Program
As a world-renowned program training students in every aspect of professional curatorial work, we emphasize hands-on practical skills. During the two concentrated years of the program, you will have the opportunity to study with leading curators from major institutions in New York, while hearing each week from curators around the world whose practices offer insights into curatorial techniques, contemporary issues, and navigating the professional field. These connections bring you an international network for your career.

Our case-study seminars focus on specific areas of curating, such as film and video, digital media, performance, archival work, and other creative expressions from spoken word to music and dance, so that you are fully versed in every kind of curating you can offer to prospective employers. National and transnational art history courses, along with exhibition history, ensure that you have a solid background to understand the context of contemporary art and exhibition-making, while topical coursework in museum studies presents institutional concerns and strategies in collection building and management.

Our professional practice workshops bring you fundamental understandings of exhibition design, lighting design, grant-writing, and conservation, along with the software skills to design your exhibitions. Philosophy and theory courses deepen your knowledge of concepts related to foundational ideas about perception and experiencing art objects in space, along with contemporary cultural and political concerns. Writing workshops prepare you to communicate more professionally for your curatorial work ahead. You can see our full course listings here.

During the two years, you’ll have the opportunity to create several fully funded exhibitions in our own laboratory gallery and in large industrial spaces that prepare you to curate in a range of environments, all the more so after studying different kinds of architectural space for exhibition-making in another case-study seminar led by one of the world’s leading architects, Charles Renfro–a member of our extraordinary faculty.

These courses are augmented by a sponsored trip to an international exhibition, such as the Venice Biennale or the Berlin Biennale, followed by a hand-picked internship at a major art institution over the summer between the two years of the program. Of course, your studies take place in person in the heart of New York City, literally within walking distance of hundreds of art galleries and museums, with the work of thousands of artists in the city to view and their studios to visit.

SVA is one of the leading art schools in the United States, and while our own program’s small classes offer the chance to work closely with your fellow curatorial students and make professional and personal friendships that will last a lifetime, the greater offerings and facilities at SVA—including makerspaces, libraries, laboratories, studios, and workshops across every kind of art-making—bring endless ways to enjoy your time and broaden your knowledge and skills while here in New York. At the end of the two years in the program, our students have consistently found jobs in a variety of curatorial work with large and small museums, art galleries, private and corporate collections, auction houses, and more.

Apply now
This is our last call for applications for the fall term of 2024. Apply now. Scholarships are available. We welcome diversity of every kind. Learn everything you need to know here, while you can apply directly here. Feel free to reach out to us with any questions at macp [​at​] sva.edu.