Program Overview

Are you interested in becoming an exhibition curator or working in other areas of gallery management? Our BA Curating can provide you with the intellectual and practical skills you need to realise your career ambitions, combining classroom-based learning with hands-on experience in museums and galleries.

Within the classroom, you gain an overview of major developments in art history – something essential for any budding curator. You will also learn about the history and theory of exhibition design, with a particular emphasis on how curatorial choices shape our experiences while viewing artworks and the other objects on display in museums and galleries.

The Essex Collection of Art from Latin America (ESCALA), Europe’s largest collection of Latin American art, will offer you a place to experiment with installing artworks. Besides getting your feet wet with the more tactical aspects of installing art, these experiences will open your eyes to how curatorial decisions transform the kinds of stories that artworks tell when displayed alongside others.

Frequent, staff-led visits to London museums and galleries will also expose you to the latest developments in curating, and you will be strongly encouraged to conduct a placement in order to gain exposure to the inner workings of a museum, auction house or gallery.

To ensure you are prepared to meet the challenges facing curators in the 21st century, opportunities to cultivate digital skills will be available throughout the course. For example, for your final project, you will curate an online exhibition, for which you will produce a virtual walk-through of the exhibition space and develop digitally-accessible interpretative material for all objects on display.

Essex is the ideal choice for a BA in curating. We are ranked 6th among Art History departments in the UK for research excellence (REF 2014, mainstream universities, THE 2014). We are one of the few leading art history programmes that offers an undergraduate course specialising in curating and you will be taught by our expert staff in your very first year—another rarity in UK art history courses.

Study abroad

Your education extends beyond the university campus. We support you in expanding your education through offering the opportunity to spend a year or a term studying abroad at one of our partner universities. The four-year version of our degree allows you to spend the third year abroad or employed on a placement abroad, while otherwise remaining identical to the three-year course.

Studying abroad allows you to experience other cultures and languages, to broaden your degree socially and academically, and to demonstrate to employers that you are mature, adaptable, and organised.

If you spend a full year abroad you'll only pay 15% of your usual tuition fee to Essex for that year. You won't pay any tuition fees to your host university