Overview
Curating the Contemporary presents the practical aspects of curating in contemporary spaces. Taught by professionals, this course introduces gallery, museum, and digital curation. You will learn about the day-to-day responsibilities of a curator and examine how a curator builds a museum-quality collection. Fundamental curatorial skills will be introduced, including writing effective proposals, developing comprehensive exhibition plans, and appropriate hanging and lighting techniques. Finally, students will explore the ways in which the field is changing and examine increasingly diverse approaches to exhibition-making such as curating in the digital realm.
Learning outcomes:
- Develop practical knowledge of curating in contemporary spaces
- Gain an understanding of the day to day responsibilities of a curator
- Learn about building a collection, writing proposals, hanging and lighting techniques, and more
Academic Profile
Mitra Abbaspour is the Haskell Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at Princeton University Art Museum. She previously served as an Associate Curator in the Department of Photography at The Museum of Modern Art and an Assistant Curator at the California Museum of Photography, in addition to having served as a guest curator for a number of exhibitions at various institutions. Exhibitions she has curated or co-curated at the Museum include Helen Frankenthaler Prints: Seven Types of Ambiguity (2019), Frank Stella Unbound: Literature and Printmaking (2018), Making History Visible: Of American Myths and National Heroes (2017) and, selections of previous work includes, Re-Orientations: Islamic Art and the West in the 18th and 19th Centuries (2008), Lori Nix: Some Other Place (2003-04) One Ground: 4 Palestinian & 4 Israeli Filmmakers (2003), and Common Borders: Casa Blanca, Riverside and La Frontera (2002).
At MoMA, she led the curatorial branch of an interdisciplinary research initiative that resulted in the print and digital publications Object : Photo: Modern Photographs 1909-1945. She has authored numerous essays on contemporary artists in this field, most recently contributing to monographs of Reza Aramesh, Lalla Essaydi, Dor Guez, Hassan Hajjaj, and Shirin Neshat and has also taught courses both in her specialization, the modern and contemporary Middle East and, general area specializations—Islamic art, modern art, and the history of photography—at The Cooper Union, Hunter College, and Brooklyn College.
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