MA Curatorial Practice

Focusing on professional training, the Curatorial Practice master’s degree at the School of Visual Arts in New York City hosts students from around the world seeking hands-on learning to acquire the technical skills, along with the intense study of theory and history, that are essential to prepare for work in the curatorial field. Located minutes from hundreds of art galleries and museums at the center of the New York art world, our program brings together an internationally renowned faculty to teach concentrated courses in curating specific areas of artistic production, along with professional practice workshops considering exhibition design, lighting design, archival work, conservation, grant writing, and more that are complemented by relevant coursework in philosophy, art history, exhibition history, social theory, curatorial theory, writing workshops and tutorials, and studies in collections strategies and management. SVA’s libraries and the city’s offer immense research opportunities. All classes are small, deepening interaction between students and faculty in our beautiful study and gallery spaces. We are fully engaged with the contemporary urgencies the world faces, and precisely these urgencies are entwined in the curatorial work we do.

The fieldwork component between the first and second year of the program presents a further enriching experience, first attending a major international exhibition (such as the Venice Biennale) and then spending two months at a hand-picked international art institution for an internship that embeds our students in real-world curatorial settings. Every student makes three subsidized exhibitions—more than any other program of its kind—in our own state-of-the-art exhibition laboratory space designed by world-renowned architect and faculty member Charles Renfro, with Leong Leong Architects, and in industrial spaces in Brooklyn, ensuring that our students not only know how to curate in refined contemporary gallery spaces but in a variety of different environments, better preparing them to do their work wherever they are situated, readying them all the more for their professional work.

Our graduates go on to curatorial jobs across a wide range of venues, from museums and Kunsthallen to commercial galleries, auction houses, corporate collections, and private collections, as well as work as independent curators, forming curatorial collectives, and founding their own galleries—all underlining how broad the curatorial field is and how wide the range is of opportunities across the globe.

Our students have come from every continent, with backgrounds that are highly diverse in every way, bringing their specific perspectives to bear on two years of professional training in small groups in which they work together and have the chance to meet with our remarkable faculty and international guests. For example, the program’s internationally known Curatorial Roundtable brings more than forty distinguished curators and institution directors from around the world to the program during each two-year period, giving our students extraordinary access to a network of professionals they can make their own. Meanwhile, being in New York City means access to a simply unparalleled cultural scene, with thousands of artists’ works to see and studios to visit, along with the incomparable wealth of events of every kind that the city offers at our doorstep.

We offer substantial scholarships toward training with us over two intense, practically oriented, knowledge-rich years that prepare you to enter the professional art world trained and ready to work. The priority application deadline is January 15 for scholarship consideration, with rolling admissions following the initial deadline.

For further information, visit our website, join an upcoming information session online on January 11, and apply for admission here.