The Center for Curatorial Leadership (CCL) has announced the participants of the second CCL/Mellon Foundation Seminar in Curatorial Practice, recognizing fifteen art history doctoral students with a track record of creative scholarship and the potential to make significant contributions to the future of museums. For close to nine years, CCL has helped cultivate curatorial leaders by providing essential tools for guiding museums today and into the future. The seminar for Ph.D. students is a critical extension of this core mission. Generously supported by a two and a half year grant from theAndrew W. Mellon Foundation, the seminar launched in 2014 to introduce young scholars, at the outset of their careers, to the strategic challenges facing museum professionals.
Selected by a committee of senior curators from a pool of almost 100 applicants, the participants represent eleven American universities. For this second year of the program, CCL changed the cohort to students who have completed their comprehensive exams and begun their dissertations. By focusing on advanced students, CCL aims to create a network of scholars who will emerge into the profession together.
The students possess interests in a breadth of global regions. Their art historical specialties include Byzantine art, modern architecture and design, Egyptian art, Impressionism, colonial Latin American art, and Chinese photography. Each student demonstrates a resolute focus on building an object-based curatorial acumen. These promising scholars integrate historical scholarship and museum practice in diverse and innovative ways.
This year’s seminar begins on June 8 in New York City. For two weeks, students will be immersed in institutions of all sizes and specialties and in conversations with experts from every discipline of the field. They will learn how collaborations develop among curators, conservators, and educators, among other professionals. Through classes led by professors from Columbia Business School, students will study strategies of negotiation and decision making, as well as the fundamentals of organizational models. A team practicum will challenge them to analyze how museums calibrate mission with collection, exhibition, and programming. The students’ experience will be enriched by individual mentorships with distinguished curators in their specialty area who are working in museums across the New York region.
The students, listed alphabetically, are:
For more information about the students, click here.
Contact:
Hannah Howe
Center for Curatorial Leadership
646.405.8065
hannah.howe@artcurators.org
2015 Seminar Press Announcement 6.4.15 (PDF) (download)