Museum of Contemporary Art, Australia / UNSW Curatorial PhD Scholarship

Expressions of interest deadline: September 15, 2016
Full scholarship applications due: October 13

The Museum of Contemporary Art Australia and the University of New South Wales Faculty of Art & Design (UNSW Art & Design) are partnering to offer a PhD Scholarship in the field of contemporary curatorial practice.

Based in Sydney, this is a unique opportunity for an outstanding candidate to make a major contribution to the dynamic and growing field of curatorial scholarship. The candidate will have extensive access to MCA staff, audiences, collections, archives and other resources to conduct their research.

The 20,000 AUD scholarship will be awarded in addition to an Australian Post Graduate Award (APA) scholarship, and consists of 5,000 AUD stipend (tax exempt) per year and 5,000 AUD towards research expenses.

The project will be jointly supervised by Dr. Blair French, Director, Curatorial and Digital, MCA Australia and Dr. Lizzie Muller, Director of the Master of Curating and Cultural Leadership program, UNSW Art & Design.

Research opportunity
The scholarship aims to address the issue of how curatorial innovation is fostered and developed within the institutional framework of a collecting museum. This involves considering and developing the cultural conditions for thinking across different modes of practice within the museum, in particular through activities that cross, intersect or connect programming disciplines. The ultimate aim is to establish new ways of working with artists and audiences, within a culture of research, action and reflection.

We welcome proposals with diverse approaches including curatorial practice-based, art-historical, museological, ethnographic etc. The successful proposal will maximize the unique opportunity of working with the MCA as a site of study.

Partners
MCAAustralia connects a broad and diverse public with the work of living artists and pursues curatorial excellence and innovation in audience engagement. Now in its 25th year, the MCA underwent a major redevelopment in 2012. This transformed the museum with spacious new galleries including an entire floor dedicated to the MCA Collection; the National Centre for Creative Learning with state-of-the-art technology; public spaces that embrace one of the world’s most famous locations, and a series of site-specific artists’ commissions.

UNSW Art & Design has a strong commitment to creative practice based research, and a strategic focus on how curatorial practice addresses contemporary issues and produces unique forms of new knowledge. The curatorial research culture includes a diverse cohort of staff and Higher Degree Research students, our unique Master of Curating and Cultural Leadership program, and UNSW Galleries—a laboratory for research-driven, cross disciplinary exhibition making. This scholarship is part of a range of funding available to support curatorial postgraduate work including the Nick Waterlow and Freedman Curatorial Scholarships.

UNSW Art & Design’s partnerships include the Artspace and UNSW International Visiting Curators program, which brings four outstanding curators who are at the forefront of contemporary art practice every year to work with the curatorial post-graduate students. Recent and forthcoming visitors as part of this scheme and others include Diana Betancourt Campbell, Inti Guerrero, Renaud Proch and Li Zhenhua.

The scholarship is part of UNSW’s Sydney GLAM+ initiative—an emerging alliance between UNSW and Sydney’s leading cultural organisations, which fosters new research opportunities to address the real-world challenges faced by the galleries, libraries, archives and museums (GLAM) sector.

More info: https://www.artdesign.unsw.edu.au/current-students/jobs-opportunities/museum-contemporary-art-australia-unsw-art-design-curatorial-phd

To discuss your application please contact:
Dr. Lizzie Muller, Director Master of Curating and Cultural Leadership, lizzie.muller@unsw.edu.au