Module manager: Gill Park
Email: fingp@leeds.ac.uk
Taught: Semester 1 (Sep to Jan) View Timetable
Year running 2025/26
This module is not approved as a discovery module
This module builds on your engagement with critical, socially aware questions of display, institutions, and expanded practices of curating. Setting out key skills and intellectual frameworks grounded both in historical study and contemporary practices, it enables the development of a strong, reflexive approach to research on the varied ways in which art is encountered, and the complex and nuanced relations between such encounters and artworks’ effects and meanings.
Through field trips, practical exercises, theories and encounters with case studies from a range of geographical contexts, you will learn to read contemporary art exhibitions, biennials and more experimental curatorial practices in relation to both historical formations of the museum and to live critical issues including decolonisation, restitution, climate change, globalisation and social inequality.
On successful completion of the module you will be able to:
1- Examine the relationship between the historical formation of the museum and contemporary, socially aware forms of curatorial practice
2- Appraise a range of curatorial case studies in relation to contemporary social issues
3- Differentiate between curatorial practices taking place in different geographical contexts
4- Analyse the relationship between curatorial practice and the experience of an audience
Skills Learning Outcomes
On successful completion of the module you will be able to:
5- Generate ideas for a curatorial proposal that will develop your ability to demonstrate originality and imaginative thinking, and think beyond expected or accepted ideas.
6- Perform a practical curatorial task, demonstrating ability to learn through practice, learn proactively and adopt effective learning strategies.
Details of the syllabus will be provided on the Minerva organisation (or equivalent) for the module.
| Delivery type | Number | Length hours | Student hours |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fieldwork | 1 | 2 | 2 |
| Lecture | 8 | 1 | 8 |
| Practical | 1 | 2 | 2 |
| Seminar | 8 | 1 | 8 |
| Private study hours | 180 | ||
| Total Contact hours | 20 | ||
| Total hours (100hr per 10 credits) | 200 | ||
Students will receive formative feedback through a seminar where they will be supported to test out initial ideas for their curatorial proposals. These will be workshopped through a facilitated process of peer review which will help students understand the perspective of an ‘external audience’, which they can draw on in the development of their ideas.
| Assessment type | Notes | % of formal assessment |
|---|---|---|
| Coursework | Project | 100 |
| Total percentage (Assessment Coursework) | 100 | |
Normally resits will be assessed by the same methodology as the first attempt, unless otherwise stated
Check the module area in Minerva for your reading list
Last updated: 09/04/2025
Errors, omissions, failed links etc should be notified to the Catalogue Team