Module VISU3001: Advanced Curating: Theory and Practice

Department: Modern Languages and Cultures

VISU3001: Advanced Curating: Theory and Practice

Prerequisites

• None

Corequisites

• None

Excluded Combination of Modules

• None

Aims

• To develop advanced understanding of curating and exhibition design
• To develop students’ ability to analyse and critique exhibitions with a high level of sophistication
• To allow students to develop and deploy their knowledge and skills in a practical critical engagement with real exhibitions

Content

• The module will cover all aspects of curating and display. Topics covered will include collections development (including object selection and acquisition); curation of collections (including documentation, conservation of objects and advanced object research); and the exhibition of collections (including developing an exhibition narrative, interpretation and planning the visual and spatial layout of exhibitions). The module will involve two field trips so that students can gain practical insights into the design of real exhibitions.

Learning Outcomes

• On completion of this module students should have a comprehensive understanding of the major considerations involved in exhibition planning and design, from both a theoretical and practical perspective.

• On completion of this module students will develop:
• critical skills in the analysis of exhibitions
• confident command of a broad range of technical vocabulary and critical terminology necessary for the analysis of exhibitions
• an ability to write critically and convincingly about the aesthetic and formal specificities of exhibitions, and to draw conclusions from these
• an ability to construct a coherent argument informed by major theories curating and display
• an ability to package their high-level academic knowledge in a form suitable for museum-going and newspaper-reading audiences.

• visual, spatial, and verbal analysis,
• critical analysis and reasoning,
• independent research,
• academic and non-academic writing,
• organisation,
• time management,
• presentation and team work
• IT: word-processing, using online databases and other web-based resources.

Modes of Teaching, Learning and Assessment and how these contribute to the learning outcomes of the module

• This team-taught module will be taught weekly throughout the academic year.
• Lecture-seminars (once weekly) will introduce and facilitate discussion of key curatorial themes and theories.
• There will be two field trips: a ‘teaching’ field trip, in which students will explore exhibitions (e.g. Baltic, MIMA, Laing Gallery) under the guidance of the course tutor; and an ‘assessment’ field trip (e.g. York or Edinburgh) in which students will engage independently with exhibitions in preparation for their summative assessment.
• The 3000-word exhibition analysis based on the ‘assessment’ field trip will allow students to apply their factual and conceptual knowledge and analytical skills to an engagement with a real exhibition. The object-selection and labelling exercise will enable students to deploy their curatorial knowledge and understanding of exhibition design. Students will select four objects from DU’s collections. They will then be tasked with creating a narrative that links the objects and presenting that in the form of a 250-word text panel pitched at a general museum audience plus 4x individual object labels (at 100-150 words each). The newspaper review will test students’ descriptive, analytic, and writing skills within the compressed and non-technical form of a publication aimed at a general audience.

Teaching Methods and Learning Hours

Summative Assessment

Formative Assessment:

Seminar presentations

■ Attendance at all activities marked with this symbol will be monitored. Students who fail to attend these activities, or to complete the summative or formative assessment specified above, will be subject to the procedures defined in the University's General Regulation V, and may be required to leave the University