Co-funded by Arts Council England and the Royal College of Art, our department established the first postgraduate programme in Britain to specialise in curatorial practice as it relates to contemporary art. Our MA course provides a professional preparation for curators and arts administrators, through the practical experience of planning exhibitions and a supporting seminar programme. We offer a critical examination of curatorial practice, with special emphasis on the selection and presentation of exhibitions of contemporary art, programming exhibitions in public galleries and commissioning art for the public domain; supported by critical studies in contemporary curatorial practice, the history of aesthetics and recent theory and history of art after modernism.

Each year graduating students work together to curate a museum-standard exhibition of international artists, presented in the Royal College of Art galleries. This year’s exhibition, Of this Tale, I cannot guarantee a single word, investigated story-telling and narrative as a strand in contemporary art. The department is developing a programme of research focusing on curating the postcolonial, the moving image and art in public spaces.