General Course Listing

The courses that follow reflect the offerings for the 2024-2025 academic year. For additional course details please visit the Registrar page and click on the Graduate Course Listing.

CPG-5020

Introductory Critique of Canonical 20th- and 21st-Century Texts

Summer semester: no credit

Curators have a responsibility to know the canon, write the canon, and even write against the canon. The purpose of this short course is to provide a set of common 20th- and 21st-century references to Western art-historical movements and art theories toward the intention of a close and critical reading of them. In its particular Euro-American focus, this course is meant to stand in relation to the first semester’s far broader and more inclusive reading of translational art histories.

CPG-5021

Practicum: Logic and Rhetoric

Summer semester: no credit

This practicum will be a formal introduction to logic and rhetoric, founded in the classical canon. It is commonplace in art practices to talk about “conceptualism” and the concepts that are the basis of works of art, particularly in the post-Duchampian era. However, the foundational ideas of what concepts are, and the way logical structures and rhetorical arguments undergird the formation and expression of a concept, is largely unexamined. Through readings and exercises, students will examine logical rules for concepts, classification and definition, as well as how to construct arguments using Aristotelian syllogistic logic and modern symbolic systems. By acquainting students with the basics of logic and rhetoric, this course will provide a background that will help curatorial practitioners rigorously address the practice of concept formation as it relates to artists’ works and to their own formulations of exhibitions and other curatorial expressions.

CPG-5040

Practicum: Research Methodologies

Fall semester: .5 credit

In this practicum students will examine art-historical research methods through scholarly investigation of an exhibition (historical or contemporary). Working independently and in collaboration, students will seek out primary and secondary resources from diverse repositories, demonstrate investigative skills and present their research in the form of a descriptive bibliography and a brief presentation.

CPG-5045

Workshop: Exhibition-Making

Fall semester: .5 credit

This workshop is specifically designed to familiarize first-year students with every aspect of the preparation, installation and deinstallation of exhibitions in the CP Projects Space. Beginning with a brief review of previous exhibitions in the space, the workshop will cover the department’s equipment, preparing the space, using the space’s movable walls, hanging artworks, working with projectors, sound, lighting, completing loan forms and condition reports, writing wall texts and labels, and creating documentation.

CPG-5130

History Seminar: Post-1945 Transnationalism and the History of Art

Spring semester: 3 credits

This seminar is designed to meet two main objectives. First, to ground students in select yet defining histories of art since the Second World War and explore those legacies in discourses of 21st-century art. Second, to place established art theories in dialogue with artistic incongruities across culturally disparate but simultaneous histories. Within a transnational frame, a variety of concerns will be addressed, including abstraction, realism, decolonialism, minimalism, conceptualism, the archive, identity, body and performance, capital, witnessing, empathy and solidarity. We will consider whether certain theoretical positions are germane to specific art-historical episodes of artists; how the project of trying to write the “Other” into the canonical record is different from the project of Empire; and if art changed in fundamental ways after the Second World War, then how does the pivot differ when we look across borders? This seminar requires students to reckon with foundational ideas, grasp historiographical shifts across South-North and East-West, and draw on the lessons of artists and artworks of post-1945 art histories to grapple with contemporary artistic concerns.

CPG-5140

Case Study: Curating Technology-Based Art

Fall semester: 1 credit

This course gives an overview of curatorial models for technology-based art, ranging from approaches to online exhibitions to models for presenting (networked) digital art in physical spaces including museums, galleries, festivals and outdoor public art. This course will also investigate the history and rise of the field of immersive “experiential” digital art exhibitions and the related paradigm of time-based installations as a platform for activation or performance. The curation of technology-based art is now commonly understood as an engagement with a variety of aspects of the production, presentation and reception of the work of art. Through case studies and readings, students engage with the challenges of and best practices for the presentation of technology-based art in various contexts, audience engagement and educational materials, organizational structures and funding, as well as exhibition documentation. The exhibition history of technology-based art and changes that have occurred in presenting the work throughout the decades will also be discussed.

CPG-5160

Philosophy Seminar: Curatorial Practice, Body and World

Fall semester: 1 credit

When working on a project for an exhibition, it is in the curator's best interest to reflect and speculate on the imagined aesthetic experience that the participants may likely go through when the exhibition is presented to them. In philosophy, phenomenology is the tradition that has most systematically explored the issue of experience (its conditions of possibility, its nature and scope, its relation to our subjective powers, etc.). By engaging in a discussion of foundational texts, this seminar will explore a series of issues in the phenomenology of art and aesthetic experience. Following the thread of a question that joins the essays, we will be examining art as revelation—or in the form of two interrelated questions: What is it that that art reveals? If there is truth in art, what kind of truth is it? This will lead us to other important problems both for the philosopher of art and for the curator: our relation, bodily and otherwise, to space and the world; the nature, functioning and historicity of perception, memory, imagination and fantasy; and the constitution of our physical and “pathological” body (our body as a place of affections and as a symbolic, historical and cultural reality). Note that this is a philosophy course, not an art history or curating course. Yet the subject of this seminar will bear directly on your practice as a curator: As participants in an exhibition immediately enter into a singular relationship with what the exhibition presents to them, the curator must be conscious of the manner in which our subjective powers, objects and the exhibition space itself are, always and necessarily, dynamically intertwined.

CPG-5190

Curatorial Roundtable I: Visiting International Curators Program

Fall semester: 1 credit

Every week a leading curator discusses current and past exhibitions they have made that have been transformative for them. The presenters come from all over the world, work across all artistic disciplines and represent different kinds of institutions and practices. The first hour of the Roundtable is open to the public; the second part of the presentation is for students only and reserved for them to speak in depth about the presentation and the readings provided for each session. These discussions also afford students the possibility to connect with guests and develop a growing professional network.

CPG-5220

Workshop: Critical Writing–Exhibition Analysis

Fall semester: 3 credits

Each week students must write a 500-word review as a curatorial analysis of a museum exhibition that gives ample evidence of the curatorial argument for the show, aspects of exhibition design that clearly manifest the argument, and other manifestations (catalog, online presence, conference, workshops) worth noting. This is a good way to visit museum exhibitions on a weekly basis in the city and learn to analyze exhibitions for their curatorial work—not for the art itself, but for the presentation of the art. Each review must exhibit clean writing, strong argument, and proper use of syntax, grammar and punctuation.

CPG-5230

Workshop: Professional Practices

Fall semester: 2 credits

These intensive weekly workshops address a variety of technical and professional skills, ranging from installation and lighting design to making effective presentations. The focus of the workshops is to prepare students with basic understandings of skills they will need themselves as curators or to be able to more effectively work with professional collaborators in curatorial settings.

CPG-5250

Art Practice

Fall semester: no credit

The Curatorial Practice program intends to fully immerse its students in the world in which they will advance their careers as professional curators. Central to this world are the artists whose works provide the content of exhibitions and other curatorial projects. In order to fully value this work, students will try their hands as art practitioners by enrolling in a studio art course of their choosing at the undergraduate level (unless otherwise approved for graduate level). Ongoing critiques by their instructor and classmates will be given. By the end of the course, students will have a deeper understanding of the techniques, materials, conceptual challenges and risks of being a working artist. This will contribute directly to their curatorial practices and collaborations with artists.

CPG-5490

CP Exhibition

One semester: no credit

For the CP Projects Space exhibition, an exhibition plan must be presented to the department chair for approval. This includes the following components: a full description in writing of the concept of the exhibition, a checklist of artists and the works to be included in the exhibition, an installation plan of the works in the CP Projects Space, a budget for the exhibition, condition reports and loan forms, all wall labels for works, a wall text that summarizes the exhibition for viewers and a press release. Installation and deinstallation of the exhibition must be successfully completed by the curatorial student. All requirements are to be fulfilled with the oversight of the department chair and administrative staff.

CPG-5540

Case Study Seminar: Models of Thinking—Curating a Program

Spring semester: 1 credit

This course takes as its starting point an expanded notion of what curating is. Beyond just exhibition-making, there are numerous ways in which a curatorial practice takes shape. Students will explore the notion of “programming” as a way to understand how, why and for whom contemporary art exists and is shaped by curators, contexts and constituents. Through site visits students will observe and interrogate firsthand a range of ways that programming responds to different ideals and realities, to the discourse of contemporary art itself, as well as to diverse artists and audiences.

CPG-5550

Case Study Seminar: History as Commodity—On the Contemporary

Spring semester: 1 credit

The purpose of this course is to understand contemporary art as a distinct historical period and why the closing of this period seems marked by the threat of imminent catastrophe. It is not a coincidence that this has also been a time marked by the reformatting and redeployment of history and historical tropes on the one hand, while on the other hand there has been a shift in the use of memory and progressive thinking toward economic and informational ends. How have inertia and cyclical time been redeployed in the contemporary period as the time of finance and of the museum? This course looks at historical precedents and theoretical formulations to better understand how these changes have come about, while also acknowledging that their effects are becoming increasingly bizarre—demanding that we cast a far-flung net across many disciplines in order to make sense of their movements.

CPG-5565

History Seminar: Modern and Contemporary Art

Fall semester: 3 credits

Spanning canonical art-historical movements of modernism and postmodernism, from the first decades of the 20th century through to the early 21st century, this course considers fundamental stylistic milestones in the Euro-American artistic tradition. Special attention will be given to theoretical and critical readings that shaped the discourse around these artistic practices and their reception.

CPG-5590

Case Study Seminar: Returning the Gaze: Models of Curating Film and Video in Contemporary Art

Spring semester: 1 credit

This course explores how the increasingly central role of the moving image in contemporary art is articulated through a wide range of different curatorial models and structures, including solo exhibitions and commissions in alternative spaces, major historical and contemporary exhibitions in museums, biennials, site-specific projects, screenings, expanded cinema events and collective and conceptual practices. The course addresses the key role of artists of color and Indigenous artists in shaping the history of the moving image, and traces how film and video’s intersection with other mediums and disciplines, including performance, dance, cinema, and sound, shapes curatorial scholarship and exhibition-making. It also examines how the material fluidity of the moving image creates a uniquely open set of practical and philosophical possibilities, including the formation of new global, postcolonial curatorial structures.

CPG-5640

Practicum: Exhibition-Making

Spring semester: 2 credits

This practicum is required for all first-year students to review the fundamentals of traditional exhibition-making with a focus on collaborative, collective practices. The course offers participants a platform for debate, exploration and experimentation in curatorial practice, and encourages interdisciplinary thinking as a way of addressing the expanded role of the curator beyond the traditional art-world nexus. With the guidance of the lead instructor and the participation of visiting experts in areas discussed, students will consider practical issues of curating, such as studio visits with artists, exhibition planning, exhibition design and related software, installation, lighting, art handling, transportation and insurance, registration and condition reports, all aspects of budgeting, commissioning and fundraising, as well as such topics as ancillary program development, exhibition outreach and marketing, online development, tools and methods of documentation and de-installation.

CPG-5670

History Seminar: 20th and 21st Centuries Exhibition History

Spring semester: 1 credit

How is art presented to the broad public? What are the origins of exhibition-making, and with what intentions has it been carried out? How have governments, cultural organizations, extra-institutional entities, independent curators and artists dealt with public exhibitions, and at whose initiatives were/are they organized? This course is conceived to consider a range of exhibitions and public initiatives to understand how exhibitions have evolved from the earliest biennials (beginning with the Venice Biennale in 1895, the Carnegie International in 1896 and Documenta in 1955) to community and locally based public art initiatives that have impacted and been responsive to the public’s expectations around their reception of exhibitions. The focus of the course will move between international and local institutional models on a larger scale to more ephemeral and experimental approaches to exhibition-making, emphasizing how the production of exhibitions has shifted as the role of the curator has expanded.

CPG-5680

Curatorial Roundtable II: Visiting International Curators Program

Spring semester: 3 credits

Every week a leading curator discusses current and past exhibitions they have made that have been transformative for them. The presenters come from all over the world, work across all artistic disciplines and represent different kinds of institutions and practices. The first hour of the Roundtable is open to the public; the second part of the presentation is for students only and reserved for them to speak in depth about the presentation and the readings provided for each session. These discussions also afford students the possibility to connect with guests and develop a growing professional network.

CPG-5810 / CPG-5811

Special Curatorial Events I and II

Fall and spring semesters: no credit

Throughout the school year, the department schedules special events, such as guest seminars and panel discussions. These events range across topics related to pressing social issues, major international exhibitions, publications and specific curatorial concerns. Distinguished speakers include department faculty, artists, institutional and independent curators from across the globe, and experts in various fields relevant to the topics discussed. While these events are open to the public, it is required that all curatorial students attend.

CPG-5998 / CPG-6998

Independent Study

One semester: 1, 2 or 3 credits

In special and rare instances, a curatorial student may apply to the department chair for independent study that may replace coursework deemed equivalent by the chair. It is the general rule that all courses in the curriculum must be taken. Credit for independent study is equal to the course it is replacing. Oversight and requirements for the fulfillment of the independent study depend on the individual project agreed upon with the chair.

CPG-6050

Internship and Fieldwork Program

Summer semester: 2 credits

Crucial to the professional training and networking that are core aspects of curatorial practice is the Internship and Fieldwork Program. The internship takes place during the summer between the first and second years of the program. This is important for students to gain the fullest sense of working within a professional setting. Internships are arranged with national and international institutions. Mentors are assigned at host institutions to oversee student work and will be members of each student’s Review Committee the following fall for his/ her/their final curatorial project. As well, students take a trip overseas to visit an important biennial exhibition and take part in discussion and workshops at the event. This is fieldwork that augments their understanding of various aspects of the curatorial enterprise, while having the opportunity to study firsthand a major international exhibition.

CPG-6120

Case Study Seminar: Performance and the Museum

Fall semester: 1 credit

This course provides a focused introduction to the logistical, ethical, historical and theoretical concerns encountered when curating performance art in the context of museums and other arts organizations. Discussions will examine such issues as the critical stance of live art in object-oriented institutions, the ethics of labor in delegated performance, modes of public engagement and community activation, the role of objects and installations as traces of live events, and the challenges involved in bringing performance into museum collections. In each session, advice based on the instructor's professional experience will be coupled with analysis of key artworks and exhibitions, as well as close readings of theoretical texts.

CPG-6130

Case Study Seminar: The Expanded Space of Art

Fall semester: 1 credit

Taught by an architect, this course uses historical and contemporary examples to examine the expanded field of exhibition-making in the 21st century. The complex, dynamic and productive relationships between exhibitions and their sites will be explored as the class tackles the challenges and opportunities of found or made space, site specificity, site neutrality, object specificity, temporality and media. Using images, videos and texts, students will conduct independent research on exhibitions and their sites, and visit shows, performances and events throughout the New York area. Guest lecturers will include artists, curators, exhibition designers and other architects. Curatorial exercises dedicated to the reconciliation of space and art using conventional artworks, design pieces, time-based works and performance, as well as consideration of the virtual exhibition space, will be an essential element of the course.

CPG-6140

Case Study Seminar: 21st-Century Contemporary Collecting Practices

Fall semester: 1 credit

This course provides insight into the shifting terrain of institutional collecting practices from both a local and global museum perspective. Examining the reconfiguration of outdated Euro-American-centric models of collecting, and the subsequent move toward more inclusive art histories and other modernisms, students will gain an insight into the role of globalization, ethics, digital practices, market versus institutional relationships and an understanding of long-term collection care. Through a combination of readings, field trips to galleries and museums, as well as guest visits, the course will provide a compact and timely overview of collecting in the 21st century.

CPG-6170

Case Study Seminar: Hybrid Narratives: Curating Across Disciplines

Fall semester: 1 credit

Curatorial practices can be defined as meta- and micro-narratives that investigate the very idea of narrating, as well as its forms and procedures. In that sense, “the curatorial” activates a script that uses the assembly and accumulation of meanings across different subjects, texts and ideas. During this course, we will analyze different exhibitions and projects that discuss techniques for performing documentation as well as possible exhibition displays that use sound, movement, architecture, poetry, images, storytelling, letters and voices as new forms of mediation that can substitute or complement the traditional curatorial text as an explanatory device. Mixing modes of artistic research and more traditional fields of theoretical research, we will articulate processes of meaning-making in the curatorial field in a hybrid manner: ranging from multi-sensorial, aesthetic, associative, affective, spatial and visual modes of knowledge to more discursive, analytical, contextualized ones. Participants will be invited to work on their own research and experiment with different materials to build a visual essay that can take a physical shape in space, a text, or a lecture performance.

CPG-6190

Artists Roundtable

Fall semester: 1 credit

To complement the Curatorial Roundtable, the third semester of the program also offers presentations and discussions with prominent international artists. Working toward an increased knowledge of curatorial issues from the artist’s perspective, students will participate in a series of conversations with the artists to discuss their work, their exhibition experiences and what they seek and expect from their relationships with curators.

CPG-6420

Independent Curatorial Plan

Fall semester: 6 credits

Under the supervision of the Review Committee, comprised of the department chair, the department’s director of curatorial research, each student’s institutional mentor and an external examiner, students will create and formally present the plan of their final exhibition/curatorial project. Putting into practice their refined research and writing skills, along with the cumulative knowledge of the case study seminars and practicums, they will draft the plan for their project, from its concept through proposed artists, works, design, budget, and any ancillary programming. Students are encouraged to work with artists from other SVA graduate programs, as well as local, national and international artists, for inclusion in exhibitions and various curatorial projects. The plan must be approved by the Review Committee.

CPG-6590

Curatorial Roundtable III: Visiting International Curators Program

Fall semester: 1 credit

Every week a leading curator discusses current and past exhibitions they have made that have been transformative for them. The presenters come from all over the world, work across all artistic disciplines and represent different kinds of institutions and practices. The first hour of the Roundtable is open to the public; the second part of the presentation is for students only and reserved for them to speak in depth about the presentation and the readings provided for each session. These discussions also afford students the possibility to connect with guests and develop a growing professional network.

CPG-6610

Workshop: Critical Writing—The Catalog Essay

Spring semester: 3 credits

In conjunction with their final exhibition/curatorial project, students will write a full-length catalog essay. For this workshop, they will consider the possible approaches the essay should take; the fields of information and ideas it should include and exclude; what audience it might reach and the relationship between the essay and its audience; and the demands of the catalog essay as a form. Throughout the semester, students will write drafts of the essay while working with the instructor as a writer works with an editor.

CPG-6690

Curatorial Roundtable IV: Visiting International Curators Program

Spring semester: 3 credits

Every week a leading curator discusses current and past exhibitions they have made that have been transformative for them. The presenters come from all over the world, work across all artistic disciplines and represent different kinds of institutions and practices. The first hour of the Roundtable is open to the public; the second part of the presentation is for students only and reserved for them to speak in depth about the presentation and the readings provided for each session. These discussions also afford students the possibility to connect with guests and develop a growing professional network.

CPG-6810 / CPG-6811

Special Curatorial Events III and IV

Fall and spring semesters: no credit

Throughout the school year, the department schedules special events, such as guest seminars and panel discussions. These events range across topics related to pressing social issues, major international exhibitions, publications and specific curatorial concerns. Distinguished speakers include faculty, artists, institutional and independent curators from across the globe, and experts in various fields relevant to the topics discussed. While these events are open to the public, it is required that all curatorial students attend.

CPG-6890

Final Exhibition/Curatorial Project

Spring semester: 6 credits

Students finalize all aspects of their exhibition/curatorial project plan, prepare and install or otherwise present their work for critique, along with any ancillary activities. Curatorial projects will take place in SVA venues and in public spaces located throughout New York City. The final project is intended to demonstrate each student’s learning, development, use of curatorial methods, intelligence and creativity toward the realization of curatorial work that meets high professional standards. The presentation of the final project, along with the submission of the catalog essay and the plan for any ancillary activities, will complete the requirements to earn the master’s degree. The record of this final work, along with successful completion of the full curriculum, will demonstrate the professional level of knowledge—inclusive of practical, historical and theoretical aspects—that students have gained and can bring to their work as practitioners in the field.

MA Curatorial Practice Curriculum