CCS BARD

The curriculum offers seminars in art and exhibition history and cultural and social theory, with an intensive focus on the formation of museums, biennials, and alternative spaces; postcolonial and decolonial theory and history; Black studies; Native American and Indigenous studies; queer and feminist studies; ecology and infrastructure; media theory and technology; and embodiment and performance studies; among other areas.

Curatorial practice is a distinguishing focus of the CCS curriculum. Graduate students learn all aspects of exhibition-making, from conception, to fundraising, budget management, checklist development, conservation, community outreach, and much more. All graduate students curate exhibitions at the Hessel Museum and are offered additional opportunities to organize performance, screenings, and public programs at CCS and with partner organizations in New York.

On the job training is a significant component of the degree, through the work placement program, and students travel internationally during the course of the two years (details below).

Graduate students curate two significant exhibitions at the Hessel Museum.

• In their first year, students work in groups to organize an exhibition from the Hessel Collection which is presented to the public at the end of the first semester. The challenge is to select and install a selection of works that offers a fresh argument on art and a new window into the Hessel Collection.

• Over the course of their degree, each student prepares a final master’s degree project, consisting of a thesis exhibition presented at the Hessel Museum (or similarly ambitious curatorial project) and a related scholarly paper (6,000-9,000 words) which is supervised by the student’s Faculty Advisor and commented on by multiple readers. The exhibition or curated component can consist of works from the Hessel Collection, temporary loans, new commissions, or performance or time-based works—it is open to the design and ideas of each graduate student. Students are able to produce publications and events alongside their thesis exhibition.

Both exhibitions allow students to conceptualize and present an original curatorial project in a full-scale contemporary art museum that is open to the public, demonstrating the skills, knowledge, and creativity they will bring to future projects and roles. Past thesis exhibitions and student-curated projects are available to view online here, and written theses are archived for the public in the CCS Bard Library.

In their second year, students work with partner institutions to organize performance and public programs. Past partnering institutions have included EMPAC, The Kitchen, Brief Histories, Giorno Poetry Systems, and Triple Canopy, all New York.

During the summer between their first and second years, each student conducts direct, project-based work at an art institution of their choosing and receives mentoring from a curator, scholar, critic, or other arts professional.

The Professional Development and Work Placement Program was initiated to expand students’ existing base of curatorial research, professional connections, and practical skills. Through a concentrated period of hands-on work, students are introduced to projects and institutional contexts that align with their personal interests and career goals.

In addition to broadening students’ existing frames of knowledge to holistically develop their own curatorial practice, we also hope to encourage existing practices of collegiality and collaboration within the curatorial field, by way of interpersonal, cross-cultural, and intergenerational exchange. Some of the organizations that have hosted work placements include: Dia Art Foundation (New York), KW Institute for Contemporary Art (Berlin), New Museum (New York), MoMA PS1 (New York), SculptureCenter (New York), and Spelman College Museum of Fine Art (Atlanta). A complete list can be found on the Student Activities page.

In the summer after the first year of study, CCS Bard students and faculty travel to an international art event or artistic center and meet with a variety of curators, artists, and other cultural producers. Students have previously visited the Venice Biennale and Rome (2024); Sharjah Biennale (2023); Venice Biennale and documenta XV in Kassel (2022); Venice Biennale, Milan, and Turin (2019); Berlin Biennale (2018); documenta XIV in Athens and Kassel (2017); Lima (2016); the Venice Biennial, Ljubljana, and Zagreb (2015); Amsterdam, Eindhoven, and Brussels (2014); documenta XIII in Kassel (2012); Mexico City (2012); the Taipei and Gwangju biennials (2010); the Istanbul Biennial (2009); the São Paulo Biennial (2008); and Berlin (2007).

Proseminar led by Lara Fresko Madra – Assistant Professor and Luma Fellow

This seminar introduces key texts, questions, and issues of curatorial practice and its histories. While our focus remains in the recent past, the readings provide an opportunity to delve deeper into the history of art and curatorial practice reaching back to the 18th century. Each week we will attend to a different aspect of curatorial production: our conceptions of time; what we archive and how we categorize things; what infrastructures we have and need; the political economy of collecting, curating, preserving, maintaining, and continued operations; how we can work with and around the benefits and pitfalls of existing frameworks. In the second half of the course, we will also broach the complex relationship between art history and curatorial practice through the objects of the curatorial, artistic movements, and form. We will also work on developing research and writing skills to further contribute to the field.

Theory and Criticism in Contemporary Art led by Evan Calder Williams, Associate Professor

A year-long course that aims to develop an expansive approach to theoretical and critical work that has become central to contemporary artistic and curatorial practices. We will read and discuss work that addresses cultural practice and ideology, race, gender and sexuality, aesthetics, ecology, the social reproduction of capitalism, radical history, media, and theories of subjectivity and embodiment. The second semester will focus more specifically on the incorporation of concerns, tropes, and methodologies from twenty-first-century theoretical work into recent art criticism and discourse, with an extended focus on decolonization and anti- racism, art markets and the commodification of culture, queer theory, migration, Indigenous thought and history, media archaeology, and new ecologies.

First Year: Curatorial Practice led by Dawn Chan, Senior Lecturer

First Year: Curatorial Practice is a year-long, practice-based course that incorporates individual and collaborative curatorial and research projects, writing clinics, student-led presentations, and workshops with faculty and visiting guests. The Fall semester of First Year: Curatorial Practice emphasizes the practical aspects of curating in collections through group collaboration, peer learning, and faculty-led workshops and seminars. The course consists of seminars that touch on the history and founding of the Hessel Collection, methodologies and critiques of collection-building, and ways to narrativize exhibitions around collected works. Students will learn how to create checklists, use the 3D modeling program Sketchup, and be introduced to conservation issues, among other skills, while they develop their own curatorial projects. Student-curated exhibitions run for two weeks and conclude with faculty and peer critiques.

The Spring semester of First Year: Curatorial Practice focuses on genres of non-fiction writing related to curating and criticism.

M.A. Exhibition Development and Graduate Thesis Exhibition led by Lauren Cornell, Director of the Graduate Program and Chief Curator, and Ian Sullivan, Director of Exhibitions and Operations, and Amanda Bard, Graduate Program Administrator

This course culminates in the presentation of individually curated thesis exhibitions at the Hessel Museum of Art. Through regular curatorial meetings and workshops, in addition to frequent advising, this course is the framework through which these projects are developed and produced. Workshops are led on topics including studio visits, communications, writing contracts and agreements, SketchUp, lighting and sound, construction and design, accessibility, graphic design, building budgets and fundraising, digital exhibitions, and outreach, among others.

Specialized courses led by core faculty, as well as visiting curators, artists, and scholars, offer studies of art in an expanded context and touch on timely and interdisciplinary debate and issues. The following are a selection of electives offered in recent years:

• Blackness in Abstraction - Led by Kobena Mercer (Spring 2024)
• Temporalities of Encounter - Led by Lara Fresko Madra (Spring 2024)
• Unfolding a Story - Led by Suki Kim (Spring 2024)
• Embodiment: Practice as Research - Led by Cori Olinghouse (Fall 2023)
• Dreams of Our Queer Past: Trans Traces in Latin American Archives - Led by Mariano López Seoane (Fall 2023)
• Space-Time Art: Curating Experimental Sound - Led by Sarah Hennies (Fall 2023)
• On Quotation - Instructed by Haytham El-Wardany (Spring 2023)
• Native Art and Artists: Forge Project Collection - Instructed by Candice Hopkins (Spring 2023)
• New Perspectives on Latin American Art: Roberto Jacoby and Social Institutions - Instructed by Karin Schneider (Fall 2022)
• Independent Publishing - Instructed by Ann Butler (Fall 2022)
• Disability Art & Aesthetics: Extra-Visuality & Non-Locality - Instructed by Constantina Zavitsanos (Spring 2022)
• Asian American and Asian Diasporic Art and Visual Cultures - Instructed by Alexandra Chang (Spring 2022)
• Contemporary Black Atlantic - Instructed by Kobena Mercer (Spring 2022)
• Contemporary African Art: An Exhibition History - Instructed by Serubiri Moses (Fall 2021)
• Feliciano Centurión and New Perspectives on Latin American Art - Instructed by Karin Schneider (Fall 2021)
• Beyond Colonial Distinctions: Concerning Human – Non-Human Allyship - Instructed by Ama Josephine B. Johnstone (Spring 2021)
• Melancholia as Critical Practice - Instructed by Nana Adusei Poku (Spring 2021)

Candidacy for the Master of Arts in Curatorial Studies degree requires satisfactory completion of a total of 40 course credits, in addition to the execution and completion of both the written and curated components of the final master’s thesis project.

• 24 credits from 10 required courses (four seminars, four practicums, and two independent research courses)

• 10 credits from 5 elective courses

• 6 credits from the required professional development and mentorship placement, undertaken at the end of the first year of study

• The two-part master’s degree project (written thesis and curated component)

• Proseminar: Histories and Theories of Curating (2 Credits)
• Seminar: Theory and Criticism in Contemporary Art I (2 Credits)
• First Year Curatorial Practice I (3 Credits)
• Elective Course (2 Credits)

• Proseminar: Studies in Contemporary Art (2 Credits)
• Seminar: Theory and Criticism in Contemporary Art II (2 Credits)
• First Year Curatorial Practice II (3 Credits)
• Elective Course (2 Credits)
• Professional Development and Mentorship Placement (6 Credits)

• Independent Research: M.A. Project Research (2 Credits)
• Second Year Curatorial Practice I (3 Credits)
• Elective Course (2 Credits)
• Elective course - Second elective may be taken in either the Fall or Spring term of the second year (2 Credits)

• Independent Research: M.A. Project Research (2 Credits)
• Second Year Curatorial Practice II (3 Credits)
• Elective Course (2 Credits)