MA Art Gallery and Museum Studies

For entry in the academic year beginning September 2027, the tuition fees are as follows:

• MA (full-time)
  UK students (per annum): £15,400
  International, including EU, students (per annum): £31,400
• MA (part-time)
  UK students (per annum): £7,700
  International, including EU, students (per annum): £15,700

The fees quoted above are fully inclusive of tuition, administration and computational costs.

Fees for entry are subject to yearly review. The University reserves the right to increase your tuition fee by up to 7% each year for courses lasting more than one year, including to reflect rising costs associated with delivering our educational and wider student experience. Postgraduate fees information .

Always contact the admissions team if you are unsure which fee applies to your qualification award and method of attendance.

International student CAS deposit

Self-funded international applicants are required to pay a deposit of £2500 towards their tuition fees before a confirmation of acceptance for studies (CAS) is issued. Some applicants will be required to pay a higher deposit. More information on tuition fee deposits .

All students should normally be able to complete their programme of study without incurring additional study costs over and above the tuition fee for that programme. Any unavoidable additional compulsory costs totalling more than 1% of the annual home undergraduate fee per annum, regardless of whether the programme in question is undergraduate or postgraduate taught, will be made clear to you at the point of application. Further information can be found in the University's Policy on additional costs incurred by students on undergraduate and postgraduate taught programmes (PDF document, 91KB).

We know that student finance can be complicated. The links below provide further information to help guide you.

• Learn more about - student finance options for UK students.
• Learn more about - fees and finance for international students .
• Graduates of The University of Manchester and Manchester Metropolitan University can receive a 10% discount on their master's degree tuition fees as part of our Manchester Alumni Loyalty Discount scheme.

This module is designed to equip you with a range of critical, theoretical and practical approaches to curating art. During the course, we examine the role, work and skills of the curator in museums and galleries, within historical, critical and professional contexts.

 

The course is devised to develop your knowledge and understanding of:

• The theory and practice of art curating in diverse institutional and professional settings
• The cultural, practical and ethical issues relating to the acquisition, interpretation and display of art
• How knowledge and cultural authority is produced within the art museum, and how this has, in turn, been challenged by artists, critics and curators themselves

Weekly one-hour lectures and two-hour seminars with directed learning and presentations to be prepared from week to week, including presentations by guest lectures and site visits. Students will be directed to conduct fieldwork in preparation for the class in specific weeks. Teaching and Learning Methods include:

• Lectures and seminars
• Individual and group fieldwork
• Reading, discussion
• Discussion with museum professionals
• Individual research
• Practical workshops

The course will have a Canvas site with all elements of the minimum specification including: 
1. Aims, Objectives, Timetable and Mode of Assessment 
2. Course Materials 
3. Reading lists 
4. Guidance on assessment 

• Critical understanding of the theory and practice of curating in museums and galleries
• Knowledge of the institutional and professional contexts within which curators work
• A critical understanding of the history and practice of art museum curatorship, including key debates relating to ethics, access and authority
• Knowledge of key processes in art collecting and curatorship
• Understanding of the practice of curating in its historical contexts and its ‘professionalisation’ as a historical process
• Further experience in researching and writing (both for an academic and a general reader), team-based work and presentation skills

Undertake self-directed learning and skills acquisition
- Conduct independent, critical fieldwork
- Develop appropriate methodological and analytical skills
- Apply skills and ideas learned in one institutional context to another, while remaining aware of the complexity of the issues

Fieldwork is subject to government guidelines.

-Initiate practical and creative solutions to specific criteria.
- Communicate complex research findings through clear written and verbal articulation, supported by appropriate technological tools

- Retrieve, select and critically evaluate information from a variety of sources, including libraries, archives, and the Internet
-Communicate information and ideas effectively in a professional, as well as an academic, environment.
- Critically evaluate personal performance through monitoring and analytical reflection.
- Demonstrate independent learning ability suitable for continuing study and professional development.

Assessment task	Formative or Summative	Length	Weighting within unit (if relevant)
Essay proposal	Formative	500 words	0%
Essay	Summative	3000 words	70%
Exhibition project presentation and portfolio	Summative	1500 words	30%

Essay proposal surgery and written comments	Formative
Academic advisor meeting	Formative
Turnitin	Summative

Altshuler, Bruce, The Avant-garde in Exhibition: New Art in the 20th Century, Abrams,

1994.

 

Altshuler, Bruce, Salon to Biennial – Exhibitions That Made Art History Volume 1: 1863-

1959, Phaidon, 2008.

 

Altshuler, Bruce, Biennials and Beyond: Exhibitions that Made Art History Volume 2:

1962-2002, Phaidon, 2013.

 

Davida, Dena et al. Curating Live Arts : Critical Perspectives, Essays, and Conversations  on Theory and Practice. Ed. Dena Davida et al. New York: Berghahn Books, 2019.

 

D'Souza, Aruna, Whitewalling: Art, Race & Protest in 3 Acts (New York: Badlands Unlimited, 2018).

 

England, David, Thecla Schiphorst, and Nick Bryan-Kinns. Curating the Digital : Space for Art and Interaction. Ed. David England, Thecla Schiphorst, and Nick Bryan-Kinns. Switzerland: Springer, 2016.

 

Fowle, Kate 'Who cares? Understanding the role of the curator today’ in Rand, S., & Kouris, H. (eds) Cautionary tales: Critical curating, apexart, 2010 pp.10-19.

 

French, Jade. Inclusive Curating in Contemporary Art : a Practical Guide. New edition. Leeds: Arc Humanities Press, 2020  

 

Fritsch, Juliette (ed.), Museum Gallery Interpretation and Material Culture, Routledge,

2011.

 

Haskell, Francis The ephemeral museum: old master paintings and the rise of the art

exhibition, Yale University Press, 2000.

 

Klonk, Charlotte, Spaces of Experience, Yale University Press, 2009.

 

Marstine, Janet, and Oscar Ho. Curating Art. Ed. Janet Marstine and Oscar Ho. Abingdon, Oxon ;: Routledge, 2022.

 

McClellan, Andrew, The Art Museum from Boullée to Bilbao, University of California Press,

2007.

 

Martinon, Jean-Paul, The Curatorial: a Philosophy of Curating, Bloomsbury

Academic, 2013.

 

McClellan, Andrew, Inventing the Louvre: Art, Politics and the Origins of the Modern

Museum in Eighteenth-century Paris, CUP, 1999.

Study hours

Scheduled activity hours
Lectures	7
Seminars	30

Independent study hours
Independent study	263

Teaching staff

Staff member	Role
Andrew Hardman	Unit coordinator