If long and complex is the training that a student must undertake in order to become an art historian, with all the supplementary difficulties related to the high level of specialization required by the job market, even more difficult is the path of those who decide to pursue a career in the curatorial field.

This is mainly due to the fact that the profession of curator is still a recently new one, for which, apart from rare exceptions, specific educational institutions are still lacking. Another important issue to consider, when reflecting on the contemporary curatorial panorama, is the concrete difficulty that young art historians have to face when they want to realize their own exhibition projects and they need to find an exhibition space and the funds.

The Curatorial Collaboration program promoted by the Institute of Fine Arts and the Department of Art of Steinhardt School at New York University is a great exception within this overview. Launched in January 2015, with the exhibition Absence and Presence, curated by five students of the Institute of Fine Arts (Anna Blum, Riad Kherdeen, Eloise Maxwell, Tola Porter, and Patryk Tomaszewski), this program arose from the desire of giving to young art historians the opportunity to face the challenges, difficulties and also the satisfaction that the curatorial practice implies. In addition to this, the project aims at promoting the artistic collaboration and discussion between the students of NYU enrolled in a Masters or a PhD program, and the undergraduate senior artists currently enrolled in the Studio Art program at Steinhardt School – NYU. In this way the final exhibition is the result of an exchange of opinions between young artists and curators conducted during stimulating studio visits, in which different problems and issues, especially related to the search of a critically valid exhibition theme, are discussed and addressed. Artists and curators are totally free in choosing the theme of the exhibition and the curatorial practice arises from the direct encounter with the works of the artists in question, rather than from pre-established artistic theories. While in a way this can be an asset in producing a broad critical reflection, on the other hand it may also be a limit to the creativity of the curator himself, who is forced to work with certain specific artists.

The Curatorial Program of NYU is an experimental initiative that is likely to be renewed for 2016. During the 2015 spring semester, six different exhibitions will present the partnership between ten curators and twenty artists.

http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/fineart/research/contemporary-curatorial.htm

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