‘Virtual Display’ – Honours in Curatorship course

website: www.cca.uct.ac.za
A course about publishing research projects online

Students were given access to their own websites within a WordPress multisite environment. This single admin, multi user environment allowed for a simple setup for those just starting out, while some more advanced students were able to install their own theme, plugins, and customise the sites to their needs. One theme with a basic set of options, such as header image, background colour, was pre-installed, and on the first day of the course students had to set up their site, pick a colour, write a blogpost, and create a page, to familiairise themselves with the content management system and then worked on structuring and designing the sites to suit their projects best.

The programme offers courses in the theory and practice of curatorship, developing in students a sophisticated awareness of the practicalities, politics and poetics of working with collections of many kinds. Students are encouraged to bring the disciplinary insights of their undergraduate major (whether this be in the visual arts, the humanities or the sciences) to the curating of both material and virtual collections, and are offered opportunities to work on exhibitions in real spaces and in the digital realm. A major aim of this programme is to introduce students, through seminars, fieldwork and workshops, to the central skills of a curator: to understand objects and how to research them, to work with collections, articulating them in exhibitions, and to collaborate with artists, mediating their production.