Museums and Curating

Entry requirements

You should normally have an upper second-class (2.1) undergraduate honours degree or above.

Your qualification should be in art history or another relevant humanities or social sciences subject. You may also be considered for the course if you have other professional qualifications or experience of equivalent standing.

Months of entry

September

Course content

Learn the skills to help you join the exciting world of museums, galleries and the cultural heritage sector.

You’ll learn from academics who have direct experience in exhibition curation and researching collections in museums and galleries. You’ll also learn from experts on site, with visits to world-renowned institutions such as the British Museum and National Gallery.

Alongside practical skills, you’ll gain an understanding of how the museums and gallery sector works. You’ll also discover the range of jobs available in the sector.

As an Arts History and Museum Curating MA student at Sussex, you gain invaluable professional experience working with established curators. Alongside a team of fellow students, you’ll address a current issue for a specific museum. This is a specially-designed live professional brief between March and July. You’ll get the opportunity to work on some of the pressing issues facing the sector today through this professional project. In previous years, museums have included projects relating to:

• disability and access
• Black Lives Matter
• queer heritage
• women’s histories.

Participating museums have included Charleston, the British Museum, Towner Eastbourne and Brighton & Hove Museums.

In class, you’ll explore the history, theory and politics of art institutions and build a critical framework for the practice of curating. There will also be frequent group visits to museums and galleries in Sussex, London and the southeast. You’ll learn firsthand from exhibition curators and our faculty about collections, curation, acquisitions and loans, institutional histories, permanent galleries, and temporary exhibitions.