Monash introduces new Curatorial Practice program
MADA has secured dynamic curator and academic Tara McDowell.
Monash University's Faculty of Art Design & Architecture (MADA) will introduce the discipline of Curatorial Practice in 2014 as a critical element in the Faculty’s commitment to integrated socially engaged practice and research.
MADA has secured dynamic curator and academic, Tara McDowell. McDowell will hold the post of Associate Professor and Director of Curatorial Practice at Monash University.
"I'm delighted to join the Monash community and the exceptional team at MADA,” Ms McDowell said.
“With my new colleagues I aim to initiate an innovative PhD program that will be open and rigorous, and contribute to the fields of studio art, art theory, art history, and curatorial practice in palpable ways.
“I'm especially looking forward to crafting a program situated within an art school, and to learning about and participating in the Australian cultural context."
Dean of MADA Professor Shane Murray said the context of curatorial practice had expanded over recent decades to extend beyond the production of exhibitions.
“Our PhD program will enable established curators, as well as artists, designers, critics, theorists and historians to undertake a sustained period of inquiry through curatorial projects, research and related activities,” Professor Murray said.
Operating within the framework of an art school rather than a museum, the program will encourage historical work on exhibitions (a longstanding interest of Tara’s, directly related to her work as senior editor of The Exhibitionist) as well as more experimental projects that would not normally find support within such institutions.
Tara will arrive at MADA in August 2013, with the PhD program to commence in 2014. She joins a remarkable stable of artists, theorists and curators such as Callum Morton, Emily Floyd, Anne Marsh and Professorial Fellow Juliana Engberg. MADA has ambitions for this new Curatorial program to transform and advance the culture of curating in Australia and internationally.
Tara received her Ph.D. in the History of Art from the University of California, Berkeley in 2012. Her research interests include exhibition histories, contemporary curating, art institutions, feminist and queer spaces of sociability and production, alternative archives and forms of documentation, and historical and contemporary models of experimental arts education.
McDowell was the Founding Senior Editor of The Exhibitionist, a journal on curatorial practice. She has held curatorial appointments at the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts in San Francisco, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art.
Tara also publishes and lectures frequently, and writes criticism for art-agenda and artforum.com.