Course General Description

The Master of Arts in Exhibition Design (MA–EX) program explores the intersection of design and public communications, in the nation’s capital, at a critical moment in the history of cultural discourse and spatial practice. Exhibition design, in the MA–EX program at GW’s Corcoran School, is more than the design of spaces that convey information, share stories or promote products. It does more than relate artworks, objects and audiences in experiential compositions. It has the potential to tell us about how we are living and how we could be living. MA–EX students take up the charge to rethink connections in the world. They find shapes for ideas and identities and orient them for diverse publics. They choreograph forms, facts and fictions that put people in touch with each other and with the (built) environment. They design exhibitions as sites of material expression and activism. The interdisciplinarity of the MA–EX program prepares students to innovate through exhibitions. Students work with curators, artists, and institutions. You will design in dialogue—drawing on multiple art, design, and social practices. And, you will develop dexterity, through training in analog craft and digital fabrication, studies in history and theory and exercises in real-world application. The MA–EX program coordinates with Washington, DC’s extensive network of national museums. It also engages the city at-large, identifying opportunities for exhibition in its places of memory and monument, performance and protest, and commerce and leisure.

School General Description

The Corcoran School of the Arts & Design at the George Washington University prepares its graduates to be the next generation of global leaders. Part of the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences, the school functions as an incubator for artists, designers and scholars, who learn from internationally renowned faculty at the intersection of creativity and social innovation. It is an academic experience like no other—inspiring students to research, create and innovate with the potential to shape the world around them. We are a community of civically engaged artists and practitioners, aiming to impact the world through social change. Our students are poised to not just join the creative field of their choice, but to define it for themselves as they become well versed in both practice and research. We embody and exemplify the Columbian College’s Engaged Liberal Arts credo, which strives to link disparate fields and better prepare our graduates for rich, multidimensional careers in the evolving world we live in. The challenges society faces are diverse, requiring different modes of thought, and we prepare our students by encouraging inquiry and collaboration. While we at the Corcoran School can prepare specialists, we pride ourselves on the diversity of our practice and view ourselves as a place of possibility for students instead of teaching art in a singular way.