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Critical & Curatorial Concentration

UC Irvine, Claire Trevor School of the Arts

M.F.A. in The Department of Art with a Concentration in Critical and Curatorial Studies

Aims and Objectives

The new M.F.A. Concentration in Critical and Curatorial Studies recruits and educates graduate students to pursue a career in the fields of curatorial practice, art criticism and public programming. Upon completion of this three-year program, the student will be well versed in debates that define art and visual culture from modernism to the present, capable of conceiving new models of contemporary exhibition and criticism, and trained to execute professional, innovative projects in the field. With Professor Juli Carson as the University Art Gallery Director, the Gallery will be prominently featured in the curriculum, serving as a ‘laboratory’ for cultural research conducted bytheir final project. It is a publishable text submitted to the library.

Advising
As Director of the program, Professor Carson oversees the Curatorial Concentration. In the first year, the student is advised to identify a critical mass of faculty to begin his/her research. In the second year, the student works intensively with the identified group of faculty, and by the end of that year commitments from select faculty are made to form the final thesis committee. In the third year, students work intensively with their thesis committee on the production of their final project. The thesis committee consists of no more than 5 members, one of which must be from the School of Humanities. The student selects the chair of their thesis committee from the Critical & Curatorial core faculty.

Sample