Launch your career in the arts and cultural sector. Taught in collaboration with leading institutions and art spaces, this degree trains art sector leaders of the future by cultivating a comprehensive knowledge of the cultural, theoretical, social, political and economic forces that shape gallery and museum systems. MORE INFO
You will be immersed in the professional world of galleries and museums. Your studies will critically engage with knowledge from Australia’s First Nation’s people to contemporary global art and the study of museums, galleries, cultural institutions, art spaces, and arts practitioners. You can select from a range of units taught in partnership with leading cultural institutions that cultivate critical and practical expertise, such as the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Australia and our very own Chau Chak Wing Museum, to which you will have exclusive access and substantial opportunities for professional development and sector-leading internship placements.
Ways of Curating Students with Emeritus Professor Terry Smith at the AGNSW,2023 with the Pukamini Grave Posts. Photo: Donna West Brett
Key units of study offer essential training in the history of art museums, contemporary curatorial practices, working closely with art objects and art writing, critically examining exhibition and collection strategies, or understanding the art world. The degree also offers specialist units in curating Asian, Islamic, Australian, and Indigenous Art, art and crime, fashion, design or the moving image. Your studies will position you as an expert in the vital role art plays in shaping the values, ethics, and identities of cultures and societies. A key component of our program is sector-leading, project-based internships supervised by industry professionals in local, national and international arts organisations. Internships provide invaluable workplace experience, training and networking opportunities. Alternatively, expand your research skills with a written dissertation, exhibition or curatorial plan offering a pathway to curatorial research positions or research degrees.
SEMESTER 1
ARHT6935 The Art Museum: Past, Present and Future (Core unit) Professor Roger Benjamin and Professor Jos Hackforth-Jones
This unit of study explores the art museum from its origins in Renaissance and Baroque princely and aristocratic collections, through to the creation of new public spaces and institutions for exhibiting art in the 18th and 19th centuries, including national Academies and international exhibitions. Shifting conceptions of the role of the art museum will be addressed: from public instruction to nation building and mass entertainment. The final section explores current debates, including those posed by an expanding range of new media and changing audience perceptions. Jos Hackforth-Jones was director of Sotheby’s Institute of Art from 2008-19 and has a research focus on art and the British Empire, as well as ethics and business in the arts industry. Roger Benjamin is an internationally renowned art historian. His research fields have included Matisse and the art of the Fauves; French Orientalist art and colonialism 1830-1930; contemporary Australian art, and contemporary Australian Indigenous art ARHT6960 Contemporary Curating (Core unit) Dr Lilian Cameron
Museum of Contemporary Art, Australia, Photo Brett Boardman
This unit of study focuses on contemporary curatorial practices and explores emerging trends and new directions in curating. It considers the expanding role of the curator, moving from traditional contexts in the art gallery and museum, to contemporary art spaces, artist-run initiatives, public sites, and into globalised and virtual settings. Curating is its own discipline. It has its own histories and is constantly evolving new modes of exhibition-making. The Contemporary Curator is inventing new ways for art to involve itself in society and we investigate the curatorial practices that meet the complexities, complacencies, inequalities, and possibilities of the contemporary moment.
Lilian Cameron is the former Course Leader for the Curating, Museums and Galleries semester course at Sotheby's Institute of Art, London, prior to relocating to Sydney, and author of Curating Art Now, 2022.
ARHT6937 Collecting and Exhibiting Asian Art (Selective unit)
Exhibition at White Rabbit Gallery
This unit investigates the rising interest in Asian art by galleries, museums, bi/triennials and their audiences; it explores the politics and issues related to the circulation, exhibition and collection of modern and contemporary Asian art both inside and outside of Asia. Students will achieve a unique insight into institutional settings and curatorial practice in relation to Asian art both internationally and regionally. Critical attention is given to the global interaction between “Asia” and the West, with the aim to ultimately broaden the experience of students who are interested in curating aspects of pre-modern, modern, and contemporary Asian art.
Yvonne Low specialises in modern and contemporary Southeast Asian art, with an interest in Chinese diaspora culture and transnationalism, feminisms in Contemporary art, women’s history, and digital methods.
ARHT5908 The Business of Art (Selective unit) Professor Jos Hackforth-Jones
Andy Warhol, RDA/Getty Images
Delve into the world of art galleries and museums, auction houses, private and corporate collections, artist-run and alternative spaces as vital components of the global intersection between the art world and the art market. Through site visits, case studies and industry lectures, students will study concepts of authenticity, value, exhibiting, selling and collecting art, alongside principles of law and ethics to gain a unique understanding of the business of art today. Jos Hackforth-Jones was director of Sotheby’s Institute of Art from 2008-19 and has a research focus on art and the British Empire, as well as ethics and business in the arts industry, and editor of Art Business Today: 20 Key Topics, 2016. SEMESTERS 1 AND 2
ARHT6923 Capstone Art Curating Placement (Capstone unit) and ARHT6942 Elective Art Curating Placement (Elective Unit)
The Art Curating placement offers an invaluable opportunity to gain hands on experience in one of the University of Sydney’s many institutional partners. Students undertake a 20-day internship, focused on a specific aspect of arts or curatorial professional practice. Internships invite critical reflection on practice, foster skill acquisition, and enhance employment prospects. Projects encourage reflection on the relationship between theory and practice which is synthesized in a major essay. Partner organisations include public and commercial galleries, libraries, and archives as well as Artist Run Initiatives, auction houses and dealers, peak body organisations and festivals. ARHT6920 Dissertation Part 1/ARHT6921 Dissertation Part 2 (Capstone units) Dr Chiara O’Reilly
Nike Savvas, Atomic: full of love, full of wonder, 2005 AGNSW August 2018 Photo COR
Master degree candidates only may undertake research and writing on an approved topic towards a dissertation of 12000 words under the supervision of an academic staff member. The topic is elective. Art Curatorship students have the option of writing a thesis in the form of an exhibition plan and catalogue Essay. The dissertation is equivalent to two units of study. Students enrol in ARHT6920 Dissertation 1 in their first semester of research and complete by enrolling in ARHT6921 Dissertation 2 in the following semester. Chiara O’Reilly is the Director of the Postgraduate Museum and Heritage Studies Program at the University of Sydney. Her research examines museum and gallery history, collections, exhibitions and audience experience.
SEMESTER 2
ARHT6914 Working with Art: Objects in Focus (Core unit) Dr Mark de Vitis
Museum of Contemporary Art, Australia
Taking a 360-degree view of the life of a curator, each year this unit runs in an exclusive partnership with a major cultural institution. Working with industry leaders, the unit introduces students to fundamental skills and issues in the study of art through object-based interpretation through exclusive insights, in behind-the-scenes sessions. It considers complexities and challenges related to the analysis, interpretation and display of individual works of art in the context of museums and galleries. Students are supported to develop the ability to work closely with the physical art object. Mark De Vitis specialises in the study of cultures of dress and dressing, both past and present, and the visual and material culture of the early modern world ARHT5902 Writing for the Art and Museum Sector (Core unit) Dr Keith Broadfoot with Dr Jennifer Blunden
Young Viewer at Art Gallery of New South Wales, photo by: Yvonne Low Writing is essential for working in art galleries and museums, such as interpretive texts for audiences, research for publications, education, criticism, or for digital media. This unit will study essential texts by curators and critics and offers workshops to develop skills in writing for a range of contexts, objects, and art forms. Engage in research and writing methods for object labels, podcasts and audio guides, audiences with diverse needs, auction catalogues and other contexts. The modules offer interactive platforms and collaborative learning opportunities with the Chau Chak Wing Museum and local collections to build experience and enhance skills for career readiness or development. ARHT6932 Ways of Curating: Exhibition and Display (Selective unit) Associate Professor Donna West Brett
Exhibition installation: Art Gallery of NSW
Exhibitions are the key medium through which art is displayed and interpreted as a prominent and diverse part of contemporary culture. This unit engages with current exhibitions in Sydney art museums and art spaces to interrogate textual, theoretical, and exhibition-based strategies. Students will critically engage with ways of thinking about curating from decolonisation, globalisation and communities, to historical, narrative, biographical, feminist, queer and activist models as they relate to current exhibitions in situ. A range of curatorial approaches will be analysed alongside historical and current art exhibition critique.
Donna West Brett is an Associate Professor in Art History and Chair of Discipline. Donna came to the University of Sydney in 2014 after a career in the arts and art museum sector. Her research specialises in the history of art and visual culture with a particular interest in photographic history and how the medium is employed within systems of power, media and public spectacle. ARHT6964 Art and the Moving Image (Selective unit) Dr Keith Broadfoot
Isaac Julien, Once Again … (Statues Never Die), 2022. The Barnes Foundation, installation view. Image courtesy Isaac Julien and Victoria Miro, London/Venice. Photo by Henrik Kam.
The moving image is a defining feature of much contemporary art and its impact has been transformative. This unit explores the influences and intersections between art and the moving image. Through studying the moving image in a range of mainstream and experimental contexts - from art cinema, film and video to the impact of the digital and the proliferation of social media - the unit assesses the aesthetic implications of the rise of the screen image. In examining the history of artistic innovation with the moving image the unit also considers how institutions have sought to collect, preserve and exhibit the moving image. Keith Broadfoot lectures on modernism and Australian art, including theories of spectatorship.
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