About

Message from the Dean:
What does the Arts Studies and Curatorial Practices program at the Graduate School of Global Arts offer?

In this globalizing and also shrinking world, people wander around the globe, searching for their place and community. While developed countries are facing various challenges posed by capitalism, developing countries are still in the midst of rapid economic growth. Through contact with both developed and developing regions in the world, the Graduate School of Global Arts intends to enable students to become creative professionals who can not only develop and curate arts and cultural practices, but also critically examine these cultural practices in an attempt to present new contexts and to unveil the diverse, changing values in society today.

The Arts Studies and Curatorial Practices program that was launched in Spring 2016, focuses on three core areas of specialization in order to study the relationship between the arts and society. The first core area is arts management, which aims to link practitioners in the arts with their audiences. It involves planning, producing, and managing performances, artworks, projects, etc., as well as raising funds and obtaining support. Facilitating collaboration and coordination with stakeholders involved is also part of arts management. In this program, students explore effective management approaches within a variety of art fields—including fine art, music, film and new media—through hands-on practice in project planning and management, whilst also acquiring knowledge of the history and theory of arts management. This approach helps students understand how to form relationships with various institutions and key figures in society, such as municipalities, corporations, foundations, the media, NPOs, artists, and the public. Students also learn how to respond to social change in order to establish a new relationship between the arts and society and enable the development of a creative society.

The second core area is curation. Curating entails finding a theme and developing a concept for an exhibition, as well as selecting suitable artists and artworks, and an appropriate exhibition space. The goal is to produce and manage an exhibition in such a way that the ‘philosophy’ of the exhibition is communicated visually. Curation also involves the documentation and linguistic dissemination of art works, as exemplified in the catalogues, which are produced to record the exhibition for posterity. To this end, by providing an environment in which students can acquire key critical theories on art and curation, and also undertake exhibition planning at various levels and in specific contexts, the Arts Studies and Curatorial Practices program equips its students with the skills and criticality they need. Curation requires a broad knowledge across many fields, including the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences.

The program also provides opportunities for students to analyze the relationship between the arts and society from a social sciences perspective. Areas of research include sociology, media and culture, cultural economics, and cultural policy. Students will examine the relationship between art and society through literature reviews and fieldwork, taking into account recent theoretical developments in this field of study. Research areas in this program also include new topics in art and culture that are emerging through the recent advancement of media and other information technology.

Sumiko KUMAKURA
Dean