CuMMA (Curating, Managing and Mediating Art) is a two-year, multidisciplinary Master’s degree programme at Aalto University focusing on contemporary art and its publics. CuMMA provides a structure for reflection and acting, learning and organizing in art institutions and the public sphere. We aim to explore possibilities to understand and shift the paradigms of contemporary art and the world around us. Thus we understand curating, educating and organizing as ways of being active, of creating relations and of being open for unexpected encounters, thoughts and knowledges. The CuMMA studies give the students the opportunity to learn with and from artists, activists, practitioners and theorists. The content is actively developed in relation to the changing demands of the curatorial and cultural field. We put an emphasis on developing ways to promote each student¹s own curatorial, theoretical and educational thinking. Our pedagogical models are based on shared expertise and exploratory learning and are applied in order to create an open, conversational and dialogic space for learning and acting. The CuMMA Masters’ Programme comprises theoretical lessons, workshops, practical projects, excursions and a thesis. Theoretical studies respond critically to the current practices of curating, educating and organizing in the field of contemporary art. Mutually, the practical side of the CuMMA studies aims to (re)conceptualize and challenge the conventions of the art world. Together with its curatorial and educational core content, the masters’ programme also gives its students insights in critical management studies of the cultural field. It employs experimental and intensive forms of study to give the students the opportunity to analyse institutional structures and invent new strategies of organizational thinking and practices. Lecturer Riikka Haapalainen also teaches the course, and Darja Zaitsev is its assistant. CuMMA’s visiting professor during the semesters 2012–2013, 2013–2014 and 2014–2015 is Professor Irit Rogoff from Goldsmiths College, University of London.
