Master of Arts in Visual Cultures, Curating and Contemporary Art Aalto University

Visual Cultures, Curating and Contemporary Art (ViCCA) is a two-year transdisciplinary Master’s Programme which explores emerging knowledge’s and practices at the intersections of visual cultures, curating and contemporary art. We facilitate students to develop and contextualize their own practices within and in between these contexts. The programme is open to artists, curators, scholars and practitioners with different backgrounds and experience, who are looking for opportunities to understand, challenge and shift the paradigms of contemporary art and the world around us.

Goal of education (Learning outcomes)

ViCCA explores art in new contexts. Central for the program are the new and emergent professional practices, which are born and developed in the new spaces of cultural production. In the program art making and new professional agencies are explored within the broadened field of visual cultures.

In ViCCA theory and practice are tightly interwoven and emphasis is put on developing each student’s artistic, curatorial and theoretical thinking. The programme offers great opportunities to develop research abilities and a sense for artistic and critical thinking. Learning from each other’s different professional backgrounds also plays an important role in the programme. The program offers the chance to broaden one’s professional identity and to create new ways of working, and new forms of professionalism.

The learning outcomes:

• Students have a wide understanding of contemporary and emerging artistic practices, relevant theories and international discourses in the field of visual cultures
• Students are able to engage in open research processes, learning to combine theoretical knowledge and practices with concrete artistic or curatorial projects
• Students learn to contextualize their work in relation to different professional fields and social and cultural phenomena.
• Students will gain tools to work and experiment in their chosen field in visual cultures, curating and contemporary art.
• Students will have comprehensive research and writing skills, which helps them to prepare also for doctoral studies

Career opportunities

The students graduating from the programme can build their own creative positions and professional agencies in the multi-faceted, constantly changing and multi-disciplinary world. Students can deepen their own artistic, curatorial or theoretical practice and the students who have a background outside of visual culture and contemporary art can enrich their own fields of expertise with a new point of view – and a broad array of new methods of working with it. Beside the cultural and art field graduates can be employed also in universities and other sectors in society, working as experts in multidisciplinary groups of professionals.

Students that graduate from the program can also work in a variety of already existing professions in the field of arts and culture, such as art museums, galleries, artists’ associations, art and culture projects or initiatives, and foundations or trust funds.