International Master's Program in Curating, including Art, Management and Law

Entry requirements

General entry requirements

Months of entry

August, September

Course content

The International MA Programme in Curating Art is committed to producing graduates who can think curatorially and practice curation creatively across a broad spectrum of cultural platforms, organizations, and collaborators in the service of a more democratic world.

The International MA in Curating Art is the first and pre-eminent curatorial programme in Scandinavia. Since its founding in 2003, its graduates have not only shaped Nordic curatorial practice but have held significant positions in art and cultural institutions globally. Curating Art is a unique programme, having been founded as a collaboration between Art History, Business, and Law at Stockholm University and two prominent art institutions in Stockholm: Magasin III and Liljevalchs konsthall. This collaboration now includes Accelerator, the experimental exhibition space at Stockholm University that opened in 2019. This collaborative spirit between the University and public cultural institutions, the classroom and the public exhibition space, research and presentation, theory and practice, characterizes every aspect of the programme.

Theory & practice woven throughout our curriculum
The curriculum maintains a dynamic balance between theory and practice. This balance reflects a commitment to research, experimentation, and critical reflection as crucial for informed and effective curatorial practice. The research component of the curriculum is built upon the theoretical concept of the curatorial, a distinctive way of thinking that informs all dimensions of curatorial practice. The curriculum affirms that theory and method are woven throughout every stage of curatorial production. Reflecting the programme’s origins in Art History, the curriculum also affirms the importance of studying previous iterations of curatorial practices in art and cultural history, as an indispensable means to develop a robust curatorial practice.

Art Law & Arts Management
In addition to maintaining an intimate relationship between the theory and practice of curation, the programme also expands the classroom experience to include its legal and administrative dimensions. The art law course prepares students to become familiar with the many ways that their practice is shaped by the legal implications of working with artists, works of art, and art organisations. The course is taught by the leading legal expert on art in Scandinavia, lawyer Katarina Renman Claesson. The course on Arts Management is co-taught by the programme’s four-person team: curator and administrator Nicole Bood, Dr Magdalena Holdar, curator Nina Øverli, and Dr Daniel A. Siedell. The arts management course is intended to empower curators to think and act creatively in, through, and if necessary, even against institutional networks and systems, in order to accomplish their goals. Case studies form the core of the course, showing how previous generations of curators and artists negotiated bureaucracies imaginatively. The course also prepares students for careers in organisational leadership by equipping them to embrace the creative dimension of arts management as well as recognise the importance of creative and imaginative leadership.

Hands-on practical experience
In addition to the rigor of the curriculum in the University, the programme is also characterised by its relationships with area arts and cultural institutions. This includes a ten-week internship during the second semester of the first year. In addition to this intensive hands-on practical experience at one of Stockholm’s premier arts organisations, students enjoy numerous opportunities during the programme to learn from curators, directors, administrators, and artists, throughout Stockholm and beyond through supervision and mentorship as well as workshops and extra-curricular projects.

This emphasis on practical experience has meant that over the course of two decades, the programme has become an important curatorial platform in its own right, producing exhibitions, publications, workshops, lectures, and other public events that have woven it into the fabric of the art and cultural life of Stockholm and beyond, as students experiment with collaborations that expand the practice of traditional curating formats.

Two final projects
The distinctive balance between theory and practice that characterises this intense two-year programme is ultimately reflected in the production of two final projects – a public curatorial project as well as an academic thesis – during the final year. These two distinct but related projects exemplify the programme’s commitment to curatorial practice as a form of thought, experimentation, and research. Moreover, the curriculum systematically and self-consciously transgresses disciplinary and institutional boundaries and habits (e.g., creative expression and academic research) in the service of projects and practices that increase knowledge, freedom, justice, and equality.