About the Certificate

The Certificate in Curatorial Studies aims to broaden students’ understandings of and provide training and mentoring in critical approaches to contemporary curatorial studies in the arts through a partnership with the School of the Arts, the McMaster Museum of Art, and the Art Gallery of Hamilton. The certificate will leverage the scale and strength of the Hamilton arts community to offer experiential, practical, and strategic learning initiatives. The certificate fills a critical need for students to learn about and gain professional knowledge for the pursuit of graduate studies, professional programs, and employment opportunities in the fields of in museum and gallery curating, museum education, and community and cultural arts administration. A key objective of the certificate is to help students develop skills and deeper understandings and knowledge of anti-oppressive, decolonialiality, and transformative frameworks through course work including a final capstone course that includes experiential learning in the field.

Centering transformative and re-distributive justice, the certificate in curatorial studies will consider the unmaking and remaking of art institutions and critically examine the role of curators in the future of art institutions.

The certificate in Curatorial Studies is designed for students across a range of disciplines in Humanities including but not limited to: iArts, Gender & Social Justice, Global Peace and Social Justice, English & Cultural Studies, History, Classics, Communications Studies, Media Arts, and Philosophy.