The Local versus the Global in Curating and Curatorial Pedagogy

Based on the specific structure of the new University of Southern California, Roski School of Art and Design curriculum of the MA in Curatorial Practices, this article polemically examines current tendencies in curating and curatorial practices programmes, arguing that there is an important role to be played by the latter – but not, as is often argued, in extending the reach of the self-proclaimed ‘global’ art world. The role of curatorial pedagogy, to the contrary, might best be understood as a critical one in giving students tools to understand the dangerous history behind claims of the ‘global’, which resonate with colonialist and imperialist and capitalist ideologies that have, since the early modern period, defined ‘art’ as such in Europe and European-based cultures.