In the short time since Hernan Diaz Alonso assumed directorship of SCI-Arc, the prestigious architecture institute has already seen quite a few changes. Adding to the roster of programs at the newly-founded EDGE, a graduate center focusing on something like the "edges" of the rapidly-expanding discipline, SCI-Arc has just announced "MEAT", or "Making Exhibitions in Architecture Today", a graduate-level summer program for aspiring architecture curators.
Helmed by the respected theorist (and UCLA faculty member) Sylvia Lavin, MEAT intends to introduce summer students to the "intellectual and curatorial potentials in architectural exhibition practices".
The program will comprise a three and a half week course following an "intensive schedule of seminars and excursions," notably to local museums, galleries, and studios. Guest lecturers will include Sarah Herda of the Graham Foundation, Paola Antonelli from MoMA, and Giovanna Borasi from the Canadian Centre for Architecture.
“Launching MEAT doesn’t come out of the blue,” Lavin states in the press release. “Curating is emerging as an independent discipline. With the proliferation and increased visibility of the architectural exhibition it is vital to create a diaspora of critical architectural curators.
"Architectural exhibitions are one of the most important forms of contemporary architectural practices today. This program engages future exhibition makers to redesign architecture itself.”
Indeed, recent decades have seen a marked increase in the practice, with biennials popping up around the world and museums like the Met finally hiring curators specifically focused on architecture. Still, unlike the art world, architecture, as a field, has few viable professional opportunities for this line of work – at least for now.
According to Diaz Alonso, “MEAT is the latest in a series of relationships the school is forging with the museum world."
That being said, unlike at Columbia's Critical, Curatorial and Conceptual Practices in Architecture, for example, students will not receive a degree (an M.Arch-MEAT?) upon completion. No word yet on the price, either. But, hey, how about that acronym?
![Book Launch: "L.A. [TEN]: Interviews on Los Angeles Architecture 1970s-1990s" author in conversation with Aaron Betsky, Sylvia Lavin](https://archinect.gumlet.io/uploads/yl/yl5lb6rodwh02yb3.jpg?fit=crop&auto=compress%2Cformat&enlarge=true&w=248&h=147 "Book Launch: \"L.A. [TEN]: Interviews on Los Angeles Architecture 1970s-1990s\" author in conversation with Aaron Betsky, Sylvia Lavin")
4 Comments
You can now pay 50k to go rub shoulders with some frou frou curators for a summer? I doubt that is going to help anybody break into the museum scene. That is one of the most tight-knit, incestuous, and paranoid fields you could ever choose - even worse than architecture.
At $20K+ per semester, SCI-Arc is increasingly looking like a University of Phoenix for architecture.
But, wait! Cool schools have programs with funny names or acronyms. Look, it's RUMBLE! There's EDGE!! And now we've got MEAT!!! See, its regular words that are used Provocatively! Well worth ten to fifty grand, and so much hipper than teaching excellent studios and courses year in and year out, graduating a generation of well-prepared students. Bo-ring!
Which school's gonna start the Center Liberating Intellectual & Creative Hyperbole, Etcetera?
One thing Sylvia has right: “Launching MEAT doesn’t come out of the blue,”
Amen, Sister. Amen.
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