'Curating can be learned, but can it be taught?'

Thursday 19th May 2005, 11:00am - 5:00pm.  Meeting room, 2nd floor.

As part of a series of events accompanying the tour of 'Curating Degree Zero Archive' around England, Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art will host a day-long conference examining innovative curatorial practice, and the relationship between artists, curators and the academy. Speakers include Stevan Vukovic, who runs workshops with emerging curators in Belgrade, speaking for the first time in the UK. Places are free, but limited. Please telephone 0191 514 1235 or email ngca@sunderland.gov.uk

Since the establishment of L'Ecole du Magasin in Grenoble in the 1980s, there has been an exponential rise in the number of academic curatorial courses across Europe and the USA. Alongside numerous postgraduate programmes, curating modules are also increasingly being offered to students at undergraduate level, with exhibition practice becoming part of the broader curriculum.

The four speakers will address the broader debates about the changing roles of the artist and the curator, the lack of a coherent history of curating and the emergence of a cultural management sector. They will introduce varied examples of how curating is being taught and what the implications of such study is for art, artists and the academy.

Tim Brennan
Artist; currently AHRB fellow at the University of Sunderland; former Assistant Director of the MA in Fine Art Administration & Curatorship, Goldsmiths College, London.

Dorothee Richter
Curator and art historian. Currently developing a post-graduate diploma in Curating for the University of Art and Design in Zürich. Has collaborated since 1998 with Barnaby Drabble on research, events and exhibitions about experimental and critical curating under the title 'Curating Degree Zero'.

Liliane Schneiter
Professor of Art History & Critical Studies and co-director of the program CCC (critical, curatorial, cyber-media) at the Fine Art Academy, Geneva. Initiator of the independent new-media project www.cyberaxe.org

Stevan Vukovic
Theorist and curator. Currently runs workshops with emerging curators in Belgrade, Serbia. His latest projects include 'A Dogumentary Approach', at the Munich Kunstverein; 'Belgrade Art Inc', for the Secession, Vienna. This will be the first occasion Stevan has given a talk in the UK.

'Curating Degree Zero Archive' was co-founded by curators Barnaby Drabble and Dorothee Richter. The tour is managed and produced by 'Situations' at the University of the West of England in Bristol, with the support of the Arts Council of England. The Archive can be seen in the Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art Project Space 22 April - 19 May 2005.

For further information visit www.curatingdegreezero.org and www.ngca.co.uk
Places are limited so please book in advance by calling 0191 514 1235 or email ngca@sunderland.gov.uk.