Manchester Museum
Art Gallery and Museum Studies MA
Art Gallery and Museum Studies (AGMS) has been taught at the University of Manchester for over thirty years. During that time, AGMS alumni have reached senior positions in museums and galleries throughout the UK and overseas.
This is an especially interesting and exciting time to study AGMS in Manchester. In 2000, the AGMS curriculum was thoroughly revised, updated and re-launched, and since then, the programme has gone from strength to strength. At the same time, many new museums have opened in and around the city, and others have been redeveloped and expanded, providing a wonderful resource for teaching and research. In particular, the programme is enriched through partnerships with the pre-eminent museums of the University of Manchester: the Manchester Museum and the Whitworth Art Gallery.
Today, the AGMS programme is continually being reviewed and developed in response to new research, emerging critical approaches and shifts in museum practice. Manchester's traditional focus on the art gallery remains, but is now balanced by courses which address history, theory and practice in a range of institutions.
In the Art Gallery and Museum Studies MA programme, students examine diverse issues related to museum theory and practice, visit numerous museums, galleries and cultural organisations, and have many opportunities to discuss ideas and issues with both professionals and academics in the field. It is a busy, but also very interesting year, introducing students to new ideas, people, places and experiences. The AGMS programme combines both guided and independent study, and includes seminars, guest lectures, site visits, work experience in a museum or gallery, essay writing and project work. Information about all these, and about the modules of the AGMS programme, is included in these webpages and the AGMS handbook.
Eligibility
Applicants will normally have a good honours degree (minimum 2:1) in a relevant discipline (such as, Art History, Archaeology, History, History and Philosophy of Science, Anthropology, Classics, English). In addition, they must have some work experience (including voluntary work) in a museum, gallery or other appropriate institution. Competition for places is high: in 2005/06, there were four applicants for every available place.
If your first language is not English, you need a minimum score of 7.0 on the IELTS test or 600 on the TOEFL paper-based test (250 computer-based), or the Cambridge Advanced Certificate (grades A-C) or the Cambridge Certificate of Proficiency in English (grades A-C).
The Programme is open to both full and part-time students. The full-time course is one year, the part-time course two years.
Student working
Course Structure
The AGMS MA is a modular degree with core and optional elements totalling to 180 credits. Core and options courses combine to make 120 credits with the remaining 60 credits allocated to the dissertation.
Semester One
All elements in Semester One are compulsory:
- The Museum and its Contexts (30 credit core course)
- Museums, Museology, Museographies (30 credit research methods course)
- SAGE (Skills Awareness for Graduate Education) (research skills training course)
- 20 day Work Placement (work placements start in semester one (November/December) and finish in semester two (June) )
Semester Two
Students choose 2x 30 credit option courses from among the following (not all options may be available every
year):
- Art in the City: Collecting, Curating, Commissioning
- Digital Heritage (not running in 2009-10)
- Learning and Interpretation
- Museums, Anthropology and Material Culture
- Museums and Archaeology
- Museums of Conflict and Conscience (not running in 2009-10)
- Museum Objects and Exhibitions
- Museum Policy and Practice
- Science, Nature, Museums
Students may choose to take an option course in a subject other than the Art Gallery and Museum Studies, say Archaeology, Art History and Visual Studies, History, or Social Anthropology.
Dissertation
On successful completion of the coursework, students proceed to write a dissertation of 12,000-15,000 words on a topic of their choice. Dissertations, like articles (depending on the journal), may be strongly based on original primary source research, they might aim to re-interpret an already well-trawled area of the subject, or they might take up an approach somewhere between these two extremes. In all cases, however, the authors will have chosen and elaborated a body of relevant material which they bring to bear on a clearly defined issue.
Planning the topic and research design commences during the SAGE course and students make a preliminary presentation of their ideas at the end of the first semester; most of the writing is done by full-time students during the summer vacation (by part-time students during their second year).
Examples of past dissertation titles include:
- University museums and social inclusion
- Communicating Cultures: an assessment of the use of artist interventions in non-art museums
- Evaluating the educative potential of textile collections within the museum
- Missing audiences: the relationship between ethnicity and museum visiting in and around Southall
- Restitution in the regions: The Lindisfarne Gospels and the Lewis Chessmen
- Making the penal past relevant: the interpretation of history and execution in prison museums
- Revitalising Musical Instruments: Museum Display, Access and Adaptation
- Histories and Her-stories: narrative and gender in museum display
- The development of Caribbean museums and the formation of national and cultural identities
- Natural history collections: Archiving the natural world
- 'Dead body porn': Anatomical controversy in the exhibition space
- Locating Scotland's Identity within the Museum of Scotland.
- The presentation and interpretation of archaeological heritage in on-site museums.
- Representing the past: archaeology in the museum
- Recognising remains: the displays of Egyptian mummies in museums
- Photography, Community and the E-volving Museum
- Social Media and the Reinterpretation of Digital Heritage
- Museum Audience Development in a Digital Age: Using Social Networking Sites to Engage New Audiences
Apply
For any queries, please check our FAQ and/or call Claire on 0161 306 1259 or Andy on 0161 275 3144 or email andrew.rigg@manchester.ac.uk