IU’s interdisciplinary Curatorship M.A. offers valuable skills for students who are ready to research, interpret, and share the objects and images of human culture—and to apply those skills to the cultural, environmental, and social challenges of the future.
Interdisciplinary Curatorship M.A.
- Is this program a good fit for you?
Curatorship is great for students who want to apply their intellectual interests toward the collection, catalogue, display, and study of the objects of our material world. In other words, you should love working with stuff—whether that stuff be rocks or fine artwork or old 78 records—and using it to help people enjoy, understand, and improve our world.
- Undergraduate degrees that best prepare you for our program
Any undergraduate field of study can prepare a student for the Curatorship M.A. program if they’re interested and motivated enough to do the work. Common fields of undergraduate study include:
- Anthropology
- Studio Art
- Art History
- Folklore
- History
- Arts Administration
- Program overview + highlights
In our Curatorship M.A. program, you will enjoy hands-on, for-credit training in one or more of IU’s 200+ collections. You will add these practicum experiences to a highly flexible course schedule calls on you to choose an area of concentration (from within any concentration in the IU College of Arts and Sciences; Luddy School of Informatics and Computer Engineering; or O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs) and add useful electives from other fields across the three participating schools.
- Funding sources
Most Curatorship M.A. students receive a modest tuition reduction. Additionally, students may be able to receive practicum credits for relevant paid work in an IU collection.
- Career opportunities
In addition to the obvious preparation that it provides for archives, libraries, and museum work, the Curatorship M.A. prepares you for any career that requires people with a discerning eye and a knack for organization. In short, a wide range of workplaces that collect, store, analyze, and display objects, images, or text.
- Application requirements
GRE NOTE: Our program does not require the GRE, though scores will be considered if a student submits them.
More information about application requirements can be found on our website: https://curatorship.iu.edu/apply/index.html.
Coursework needed for admission
No specific knowledge is required, though previous exposure to collections work (in a museum, historical society, library/archive, laboratory, or other professional setting) is useful. The strongest applications will show evidence of academic achievement in a chosen field, an ability to write well, and a motivation to pursue a curatorial career.