BA Curating and Art History – 2nd-year Placements (2023-24)

In the academic year 2023 to 2024, 22 students carried out placements as a core module of their BA course in Curating and Art History in a wide variety of national and regional institutions. The 16 placement hosts were:

Beningbrough Hall (National Trust)
Beverley Art Gallery (East Riding Museums)
Castle Howard
Crescent Arts, Scarborough
Duggleby Stephenson of York – Auctioneers & Valuers
Everybody Arts, Halifax
Fairfax House, York
Leeds Discovery Centre (Leeds Museums and Galleries)
Ripon Cathedral
Ripon Museums
Scarborough Art Gallery
Thirsk Hall Sculpture Garden
University of York Art Collection
York Art Gallery
Walker Art Gallery (National Museums Liverpool)

Students undertook a huge variety of tasks and broadened their skills in a range of curatorial activities at their host institutions, ranging from archival research and cataloguing to delivering community learning activities and creating online media content.

At the Leeds Discovery Centre, students Miranda Ford, Ysabela Munõz and Kelly Tang worked on the interpretation of some of the hat collection with Natalie Raw, Curator of Dress and Textiles, including a unique collection of miniature hats made by milliner John Craig. Their work was featured by both the Yorkshire Post and the BBC.

An open archive storage drawer, willed with tiny hats of all shapes and colours — A drawerful of tiny hats in the store at Leeds Discovery Centre.

A young woman holding an object under a studio light while another person takes a phorto - the hands nd camera are all that is visible of the photographer., — Students at work in the Leeds Discovery Centre.

A young woman in the passage way between two high museum storage stacks, looking in a drawer. — In the store of the Leeds Discovery Centre.

A selection of newspaper pages featuring curators and tiny hats. — Newspaper articles featuring the tiny hat project.

At Castle Howard, Renée Bel-Momodu and Kia McDonald gained valuable behind-the-scenes experience, including engagement with cleaning antiquities in the sculpture gallery.

Looking down a gallery lines with sculptures to a large sculpture in front of a window. — The sculpture gallery at Castle Howard studetnt placement at Castle Howard (© Kia McDonald)

An Asian white porcelain figure on a white pillow being cleaned with a cotton bud held in a hand wearing a blue plastic glove. — Cleaning a porcelain figure, studetnt placement at Castle Howard (© Kia McDonald)

Looking up at a large Christmas tree under a dome. — Christmas tree at Castle Howard (© Kia Mcdonald)

Four sculpted busts on a bench for cleaning, with a vacuum cleaner on the floor next to them — Object care, student placement at Castle Howard (© Kia McDonald)

While on placement at the Walker Art Gallery, Imogen Jeffery wrote an article Art and the Apocalypse, exploring The Last Man by John Martin (1849) for the gallery’s website.