Knowledge of art and artists is the key currency of the curator; discerning which artists to follow and how best to support and present them, and understanding the significance of an artwork and contextualising it historically are among the most critical curatorial skills. But these are not the only forms of knowledge that are integral to the profession and, indeed, there is much in the field of curating that is not transparent or mirrored in identifiable ways in other fields. Curating is not structured in the way that other professions are (medicine and engineering, for example), where higher levels of study and increasing subject specialisation guarantee a better level of pay upon entry. One of the most time-honoured routes in is via university study and academic formation of an art-historical specialism. Others follow a multi-disciplinary path or study a different field altogether, which is more common, indeed prevalent among an earlier generation of contemporary art curators, where high-profile curators with backgrounds in theatre, politics and literature form an influential number. The well-known contemporary art curator Jens Hoffmann studied theatre and dramaturgy, while the celebrated curator Okwui Enwezor (who died in 2019) studied politics and philosophy, as well as publishing poetry. Klaus Biesenbach, the German-born, LA-based museum director, founded the influential KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin while a medical student.²

In a key change from the 1990s onwards, a plethora of Masters programmes and undergraduate courses in curating have been founded. These allow for the acquisition of institutional knowledge and the development of a network of art-world contacts through interactions with tutors, guest speakers, fellow students and visits to art institutions. For others, such networks can be gained through work, or may be expedited by social and economic factors such as an individual’s background, family contacts and class. It is not unusual to encounter curators from families who have their own collections or who are already well connected to the art world.

The routes into curating historic art vary less dramatically. Still, there are a variety of pathways in. Subject-specific study at postgraduate level (in art history, history or the decorative arts, for example), or a broader heritage or museum studies degree, are common. Relationship-building with institutional as well as academic contacts – the two worlds of which are closely interwoven – is often instrumental to gaining an entry-level curatorial position. Drive, confidence and, alas, independent financial resources are often decisive in keeping early-career curators in the field.

For prospective students, curating is not only a buzzword but where the production of culture appears to be at. The promise of a free play of ideas, (seemingly) untrammelled by the hidebound culture of institutionalised organisations and its crushing workplace rhythms, makes curating a potent symbol of intellectual and creative freedom. Curator and academic Teresa Gleadowe links the motivation of many early curatorial programmes to the ‘experiments’ among artists and curators of the late 1960s and 1970s, which sought to investigate the contexts and frameworks of art as well as to critique and provide alternatives to institutional approaches. This lineage is causal to ‘the culture of theoretical investigation and discourse’ that many curatorial programmes still cultivate today, she writes.⁶ Many but not all curatorial programmes have this emphasis, especially those that are focused on curating contemporary art; others prioritise professional training for emerging curators and the development of vocational skills. While these tendencies can sit uneasily against one another, this pairing has the potential to be productive, fostering criticality around the very vocational skills – in collections management and fundraising, for example – that the profession demands.

Students entering the field must make careful choices about what kind of programme of study they enrol in. But how much of curating can even be taught and what is it that one teaches on a curatorial programme or degree? This has been the subject of wide-ranging debate among curators, scholars and teachers in the curatorial field, not to mention ex-students who have now made professional inroads. Some have argued that while such programmes facilitate peer-networks and a highly supportive environment for critical discussion, they cannot offer the ‘hands-on work with art and artists’ that is critical to the development of a curatorial ‘methodology’, nor teach the necessary skills such as fundraising that are necessary to flourish in such a competitive career.⁷ These concerns, voiced by the curators Maria Lind and Polly Staple respectively, are sometimes joined by a third perspective, articulated by curator Jessica Morgan: that curatorial programmes might homogenise the more experimental pathways by which the great curators entered the field in past decades.⁸

These concerns are valid, if somewhat generalised in application. Curatorial programmes have different areas of emphasis, be that the development of methodologies through practice-based projects, the cultivation of professional and vocational skill (including fundraising), or critical thinking and theoretical discourse around the history of exhibitions and institutions. While learning continues, indeed accelerates, on the job, a course of study can provide the groundwork for a methodology or the context in which a student first experiments with one. Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy, Director of Kunstinstituut Melly in Rotterdam (formerly Witte de With Centre for Contemporary Art) and a graduate of Bard College’s Center for Curatorial Studies, states that such programmes ‘offer a way of working and a forum for discourse about that work.’⁹ She continues: ‘in addition, they teach exhibition history, introducing art from the angle of exhibitions – their philosophical underpinnings and their impact on the vision and administration of new spaces and institutions’.¹⁰ Cuy’s predecessor at Kunstinstituut Melly, the Turkish curator Defne Ayas, studied at the renowned De Appel Curatorial Programme in Amsterdam (established in 1994). It would seem that for both these curators, as well as a number of their contemporaries, curatorial programmes have provided valuable professional as well as conceptual underpinning.

Studies in curating can also demystify an industry that is notoriously opaque and difficult to navigate. Not all programmes will do so – some might enhance its mystique or leave students naive to art-world industry dynamics. But where a programme of study reveals facets of the field previously learned through trial and error in one’s early career, or absorbed via conversations with art-world insiders that only those with resources and family connections can instigate, its potential to render a challenging sector more accessible and inclusive becomes a reality. This depends, of course, on pedagogical approaches in the classroom; on the kinds of lectures given, readings set and approaches to learning and participation that are available. It also depends, as Markopoulos writes, on the make-up of the classroom itself, as students come to the field with their own sets of interests, which curatorial education can either homogenise or draw out.¹¹ A diverse student group is by no means a given, however, as a double process of self-selectivity often occurs in graduate curating programmes, whereby a career pathway that is accurately perceived as unstable puts off students from lower-income backgrounds.

Indeed, curatorial programmes lie at the nexus of higher education and the art world, both of which raise differing challenges for access and inclusion. Scholarships for students from diverse and disadvantaged backgrounds are a critical means by which classroom demographics can be expanded. This expansion is important not only for the educational experience itself but for the art-world workforce of the future that higher education can help to nurture. The prestigious De Appel Curatorial Programme in Amsterdam has a yearly intake of just six students, but Alex Farquharson, Director of Tate Britain in London, noted the great potential in the pool of applicants there. Many came from ‘from places normally considered marginal’ in the art world; in doing so they could act as vital ‘conduits between artists and publics in regions where there was virtually no infrastructure and certainly no market’, he observed.¹² Although running the risk of tying the interests of emerging curators too closely to their cultural and national contexts, Farquharson’s comment does strike to the heart of why curatorial programmes and other educational access points to the curatorial world are important. It is not only to diversify the field of curating per se, but to diversify the artists, processes and practices that are subsequently brought to prominence there.

Significant here, as elsewhere, are the longstanding structural and socioeconomic factors that have discouraged women and artists of colour from careers in the arts as practitioners or professionals, or caused their work to be downplayed or forgotten. Women employees are now nearly at parity with men in many US, UK and European cultural organisations, although in Europe this differs significantly across member states, with a higher proportion in Baltic countries than Southern member states.¹⁸ This does not mean, however, that they are equally represented at every organisational level, as only a very recent rise in female leadership across museums in the UK, for example, has put female artistic directors (46 per cent) almost at parity with male directors. Female chairs and trustees were at 37 per cent in the UK in 2019, and in the 26 museums surveyed by Burns and Halperin in the US, at a healthier level of 47 per cent.¹⁹ But in the US as well as elsewhere, there is a persistent and significant pay gap, with women directors earning on average 76 cents to every dollar earned by their male counterpart at another museum.²⁰

How these factors feed into the acquisition and programming of women artists is a complex question, with Burns and Halperin suggesting that employing women is not on its own an adequate solution to the problem. (They acknowledge, however, that in organisations led by women, such as Dia in New York directed by Jessica Morgan, there has been important progress.)²¹ Obstacles, especially in the area of acquisitions, exist in the art market, which to this date is a conservative force in the area, persistently valuing work by male artists above those by women, whatever the period. Perceptions of what constitutes an advantageous acquisition from a market perspective also influence museum acquisitions, just as they do the purchases of private collectors, who often number on museum boards, alongside figures from investment and business. Here the efforts of senior curators and museum directors are up against longstanding market dynamics, as well as the opinions of museum chairs and boards of trustees, on what characterises a strategic or gainful purchase.

With regard to race, the picture is stark in terms of representation of artists as well as workers in museums. Studies show that the sector is not diverse, despite its grounding in progressive values and public signalling of the importance of diversity in annual reports and mission statements. An Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Report in 2015 found that 84 per cent of workers ‘closely associated with the intellectual and education mission of museums’ in the US were white.²² These included ‘curators, conservators, educators’ and those in other ‘leadership’ positions in US museums.²³ The picture differed across the sector as a whole, which reported that 72 per cent of staff were from white backgrounds and 28 per cent from ‘historically underrepresented communities’.²⁴ The two figures show an underrepresentation of workers of colour in the museum in proportion to population, but most especially in those positions of cultural and intellectual leadership that have the most impact and sway within the organisation. A subsequent report from 2018 highlighted some progress in this area, with 20 per cent of workers in intellectual leadership positions now identifying as a person of colour, up by approximately 5 per cent.²⁵ Encouragingly, diversity had increased...