Kingston University
MA in Curating Contemporary Design (in partnership with The Design Museum)

Kingston upon Thames, United Kingdom

DURATION

1 up to

2 years

LANGUAGES

English

PACE

Full time, Part time

APPLICATION DEADLINE

Request application deadline *

EARLIEST START DATE

Sep 2025

TUITION FEES

GBP 22,800 / per year **

STUDY FORMAT

On-Campus

* there is no application deadline for postgraduate courses

** for international full-time | international part-time: 12,540 GBP/year | home full-time: 13,500 GBP/year | home part-time: 7,425 GBP/year

Key Summary

About : The MA in Curating Contemporary Design is offered in partnership with The Design Museum. This program focuses on the intersection of design, art, and culture, providing a comprehensive understanding of curatorial practices within contemporary design contexts. You'll engage with the latest trends and methodologies while working in a hands-on learning environment.

Career Outcomes : Graduates can pursue careers as curators, exhibition designers, or cultural managers. Opportunities also exist in academic research, art institutions, and within the design industry, equipping you with the skills to thrive in diverse areas related to curating and design.

Introduction

Prepare for a career in gallery design and curation.

This degree is a collaboration between Kingston School of Art and The Design Museum. Since its inception, this MA degree has grown into one of the world's foremost programmes for design curators.

Taught by top curators and designers, the course blends critical thinking with creative practice to address today’s fast-changing world. You’ll curate live projects and build your professional profile through The Design Museum and partnerships with institutions like the British Council, Gallery Fumi and the Royal Academy of Arts.

The course develops skills in curating exhibitions, public programmes, and alternative formats. You’ll reflect critically on curatorial practice, collaborate across disciplines, and articulate your ideas on contemporary design.

Why choose this course?

You will develop creative and practical skills for curating design exhibitions, public programmes and alternative curatorial formats. You will learn to reflect critically on curatorial practice. Importantly, through discussion of geopolitical, social, and economic concerns, you’ll learn to speak and write about contemporary design and curatorial practice. We encourage students to work in a trans-disciplinary fashion, to develop responses to the complexity of the world today.

This course is delivered by Kingston School of Art's academics, visiting lecturers, guest speakers and through industry connections, allowing you:

The chance to engage with the most recent discourse in the field;
A possibility to share your work with eminent members of your profession;
Access to 'Live' projects, site visits and placements in prestigious institutions;
To explore project work and workshops with visiting lecturers and industry specialists.

Your course will focus on project work, with briefs set by leading curators, designers and critics. Your research will address real-world issues and ask for critical responses. In doing so, you’ll develop skills in research, analysis and experimentation.

Optional study visits throughout the year bring you in contact with design and curatorial studio practice. You will also visit museums, galleries and alternative curatorial spaces and formats in London. There is also the option for students to take an international study trip. Previous students have visited New York, Berlin, Lisbon and Amsterdam.

The Design Museum

The Curating Contemporary Design MA is run jointly with The Design Museum. Students have access to inspiring curators and experienced museum staff, as well as The Design Museum's collections, library, archives and a changing programme of exhibitions and events.

Admissions

Scholarships and Funding

Curriculum

Course content

Through a rigorous framework and practical experience students will engage with contemporary discourse that responds to the complexities and urgencies of today's world. Acknowledging design and curatorial history, you will engage with those contemporary concerns through transdisciplinary collaborations in theory and practice, and will develop stimulating creative interventions and critical writing.

Throughout the year, students will work on a major live project with external partners, which will allow them to gain first-hand curatorial experience. The final presentation will be shared with the general public at The Design Museum. Students are currently working on a collaboration with Parsons The New School, New York and HEAD Geneva, which started with a symposium on Design and Film at Dorich House Museum.

The course is structured into five modules. Typically, students must complete 180 credits and will gain 30 credits with each of the four core modules, plus 60 credits in the Major Project.

Modules

You will be equipped with the creative, theoretical and practical skills necessary to curate design exhibitions and other curatorial formats, including devising briefs, conducting primary and secondary research, selecting exhibits and curating public programmes.

A carefully composed curating visits programme runs alongside the taught modules and includes visits to exhibitions, studios and alternative sites of curatorial and design practice and critique.

The dissertation and/or creative project provides an opportunity to realise independently a body of work which demonstrates an original and creative approach in the field of design curation. With the ambition to develop professional practice and theory, the dissertation has the potential to be developed for research at higher degree level.

Core modules

Curatorial Skill Sets
Theories of the Contemporary Object
Curatorial Formats
Politics of Display
Major Project

Optional placement year

Many postgraduate courses at Kingston University allow students to do a 12-month work placement as part of their course. The responsibility for finding the work placement is with the student; we cannot guarantee the work placement, just the opportunity to undertake it. As the work placement is an assessed part of the course, it is covered by a student's Student Route visa.

Optional modules

Professional Placement

See modules and class list