Goldsmiths, University of London

MRes Curatorial/Knowledge

The MRes programme in Curatorial/Knowledge takes place within the world’s only dedicated PhD programme for advanced contemporary curatorial research. It provides a profound grounding in a variety of relevant theoretical knowledges and offers a unique meeting ground for a network of internationally active curators.

The MRes programme in Curatorial/Knowledge is a unique degree recognising that in order to function as a curator in contemporary globalised culture, one needs a far-reaching educational base, a range of diverse cultural references, and the ability to ask new questions.

The world of art today spans not only cultures across the globe but also activities that include social organising, publishing and disseminating, working with local communities, and linking to institutions of education and governance. How can we equip people for such diverse tasks? This is the question that Curatorial/Knowledge has posed to the rest of the contemporary art world.

Our specific area of inquiry is ‘the curatorial’ as differentiated from ‘curating’. While ‘curating’ as such deals with the mechanisms of staging exhibitions and their discursive sphere in or out of the remit established by the museum or exhibition space, ‘the curatorial’ explores all that takes place within the context of the staged exhibition, both intentionally and unintentionally, by curator or viewers.

The MRes programme is linked to the MPhil/PhD prgramme in Curatorial/Knowledge, to provide the highest possible level of exchange between different researchers. All of our participants are young curators or artists working either institutionally or independently. The students come together 6 times a year for intense 3-day seminars. MRes students have 1 year of study in London combining these seminars with a dissertation project supervised by a personal tutor.