by Jon Lackman | 2 April 2010 | Career, Museums
The New York Times profiles nine emerging curators: Rajendra Roy, Hao Sheng, Jen Mergel, Alison Gass, Diane Waggoner, Scott Rothkopf, Diane Waggoner, Clara Drummond, and Samantha Rippner. MoMA film curator Roy says, “When I first heard they were looking for someone I was convinced I was NOT the person. I was too young, too out there, not academic.” “Fifteen interviews later, he was offered the job.” Eight of the nine have a master’s degree; two also have a PhD.
The University of Western Ontario is launching a new major in Museum and Curatorial Studies, “in response to an increased demand for training in these areas.” The University adds, “While other Canadian universities have similar programs, offering it at the undergraduate level makes Western’s program unique.”
According to the L.A. Times,
a group of USC undergrads who have taken over the [university's] museum in a new approach to hands-on learning. The class project turned them into curators, forcing them to apply art theory to actual practice, and shut down a long-running exhibition in midrun. Over two weeks the students mounted their makeover of the show, employed criticisms of traditional museum exhibits and used contemporary art and multimedia to rethink art history for the intervention … Richard Meyer, a co-professor of the course Contemporary Art and the Art of Curating who is responsible for the takeover, said the idea came from the class using the L.A. museum world as a laboratory. “We wanted them to develop a constant consciousness that everything you see in museums is choreographed.”
