VISU1031: Gallery 101: Designing an Art Exhibition

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• To encourage skills of visual analysis and visual communication through the medium of exhibitions.
• To introduce the theory of curation.
• To support learning on the VA 01 & VA 02 programmes.
• To develop team-working skills

• Gallery 101 invites students to develop their knowledge and understanding of the visual arts, as well as their presentation and communication skills by designing a virtual art exhibition.
• The students will work in small groups to on a group exhibition project. The exhibition can be based on an artist, a group, a style, a theme or a critical idea that they have studied or that is of interest to them. The exhibition theme that is chosen must be problematised: students, working with their group, must design an argument in relation to the subject in hand. A good exhibition is one that negotiates an argument or a particular view through the choice of exhibits and through their display (i.e. through the relationships established between the exhibits by the way they are placed in relation to one another in the space). In other words the student is invited to negotiate an argument, not through words on paper, but through artistic images.
• In order to complete the task the students are provided with software that they use to create an online space in which to arrange exhibits and text. This aspect of the module involves a problem-based learning approach that demands elegant and creative solutions to the disjuncture between what the students want to do in theory and what is possible in practice.
• The student will follow a taught programme which considers the history and nature of exhibitions, the politics of display, interpretation, and other issues germane to exhibition organisation. The teaching team includes academics as well as professionals from the cultural sector.
• The module develops a body of professional skills which will prepare the student for entry to future modules such as VISU2011: Introduction to Museums and Curating as well as preparing them for the world of work in Museums and Galleries

Subject-specific Knowledge:

• Students will develop and extend their learning in the visual arts
• Students will appreciate the role of critical discourse in relation to the visual arts
• Students will learn about the theory of exhibition organisation and design
• Students will gain knowledge of issues related to museum and gallery studies
• Students will develop skills of visual analysis and synthesis
• Students will learn how to negotiate arguments through the use of visual images
• Students will develop professional skills
• Students will learn about the power of the exhibition as a communicative medium
• Students will engage with the basics of conservation in relation to display of archival items

Subject-specific Skills:

• Students will develop skills of visual analysis and synthesis
• Students will learn how to negotiate arguments through the use of visual images
• Students will develop professional skills
• Students will enhance visual communication skills.

Key Skills:

• Students will: improve group presentation skills,
• hone written and verbal communication skills
• develop team-working skills
• develop I.T. skills through use of software
• employ relevant critical and professional terminology
• develop critical and argumentative faculties
• support interpretations with relevant evidence
• develop innovative research skills
• practise skills of object and image analysis
• assess and weigh competing critical and interpretative viewpoints
• construct considered opinions
• value the role of existing scholarship and critical theory
• develop a sense of personal responsibility

• The module will be taught by a one-hour lecture every week and by a one-hour seminar every two weeks, where we will consider the role of the exhibition as a communicative medium both historically and contemporaneously as well as specific aspects of exhibition design. The student will be supported in their own attempt to bring together a body of visual material in the form of a virtual exhibition as a means of negotiating a particular view of idea that they might wish to present to a broad audience.

Formative feedback and feedforward is given via seminar discussions, practical sessions (e.g. on software), tutor office hours, workshops, group presentation sessions, exhibition proposals.

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