Curatorial Studies program

Applications to the Master Program in Curatorial Studies at the Zurich University of the Arts are open until February 24.

Never before has the legibility of the past been so tied to political horizons in the present. Museums and exhibiting institutions are therefore pressured to renew their foundational narratives and redefine their role in our tectonically shifting social and political landscapes. 

The major in Curatorial Studies enables prospective curators to rethink existing institutional forms and develop new vocabularies. Curatorial Studies at ZHdK is understood as a nascent and as-of-yet underdetermined field, which reaches beyond the confines of the orthodoxies of the art world into all aspects of culture and cosmology. It is closely tied to the Zurich School of Comparative Political Mythography, a transnational research conglomerate, currently in the formative phase of its establishment. 

The Minor in Curatorial Practice is offered as a collaboration between the Department of Cultural Analysis with the Department of Fine Arts and the Department of Performing Arts and Film. 

The Master’s degree programs offered by the Zurich University of the Arts were restructured last year with the introduction of Major and Minor programs (90 and 30 ECTS respectively), together with a revision of their curricula. The previously offered postgraduate programs in Curating CAS/MAS and Ph.D. have been discontinued.  Since 2024, Zurich University of the Arts has been offering a Major in Curatorial Studies and a Minor in Curatorial Practice at Master’s level, both under the direction of Prof. Dr. Anselm Franke, who co-directs the Masters in Cultural Critique in the Department of Cultural Analysis. 

Teachers and guests in 24/25 include: Kandis Williams, Saree Makdisi, Klaus Theweleit, Pauline Curnier Jardin, Mária Hlavajová, Eyal Weizman, Ana Teixeira Pinto, Adriana Domínguez Velasco, Carlo Ginzburg, Elisa Giuliano, Sarah Lewis-Cappellari, and David Wengrow, among others. 

For questions please reach out to: Kim Anni Bassen (Assistant Curatorial Studies), kim.bassen [​at​] zhdk.ch / Student administration office, info.mcc [​at​] zhdk.ch