Courtauld and Portrait Gallery open back rooms to future curators
Twelve student curators will get access to the back rooms of a national museum.
The Courtauld Institute of Art in London and the National Portrait Gallery in London have formed a partnership giving postgraduate curating students direct access to the gallery's collections, archives and staff, The Art Newspaper reported. Curating — choosing, researching and presenting artworks for the public — is the work behind every exhibition hang. This deal lets students learn it alongside the people who do it every day.
The training will form part of the Courtauld's MA Curating programme, a postgraduate degree focused on how exhibitions are put together. An MA, or Master of Arts, is usually taken after an undergraduate degree. The first students will join this course in 2027, and will take the new National Portrait Gallery module in spring 2028.
The elective is called Working within Institutions. An elective is an optional unit students choose within a wider degree. This one runs for 12 weeks and will be open to 12 of the programme's 48 students, roughly one in four of the year group.
Teaching will be shared between the two places. National Portrait Gallery professionals will co-teach the module with Courtauld faculty, the teachers and researchers based at the art school. That pairing matters because the two jobs are different. One centres on study and teaching, the other on caring for a live collection and planning displays for visitors.
Access is the heart of the offer. Collections means the portraits themselves, the works that are stored, studied and prepared for display. Archives means the papers behind them, from files and letters to records of past shows. Staff means the curators, conservators and archivists who hold that practical, day-to-day knowledge.
The MA Curating programme is led by Devika Singh and Sofia Gotti. The Courtauld is led by director Mark Hallett. The National Portrait Gallery is led by director Victoria Siddall.
For anyone who enjoys a gallery day out, this is where future displays begin. Students learning how stores and files work now are the people who will shape what hangs on walls later. The two institutions announced the partnership on 24 September, according to the Courtauld.
