Museum Studies MA

**Arts University Plymouth is an arts university for the 21st century, preparing students who are uniquely placed to provide creative solutions to the complex global challenges of a changing world.** Formerly known as Plymouth College of Art, we were granted full university title in Spring 2022. We are now the city of Plymouth’s first and only specialist arts university, allowing us to offer our students a dynamic and unique learning experience.<br/><br/>MA Museum Studies at Arts University Plymouth offers a unique opportunity to reimagine the role of the museum within contemporary socio-political debates, working with The Box, Plymouths award-winning museum, art collection, gallery and archive (also home to the South West Film & Television Archive), and a range of regional and national museums and collections including Tate St Ives, Tate Britain Archives, and RAMM Exeter.<br/><br/>The museum as a cultural form will be reimagined and explored through debates around decolonisation, the repatriation of objects, distributed digital archives and the educational role of museums, and diversifying collections and audiences. Through this programme you will propose a project that engages ideas of the contemporary museum using methods including socially engaged practice, community building and and creative education as a productive and mobilising force that is now vital in a rapidly transforming museum sector. Your work will be situated in a city and region with a pervasive colonial and military heritage.<br/><br/>MA Museum Studies at Arts University Plymouth builds on the context of Plymouth as a centre for contemporary art and culture, in light of recent events such Mayflower 400 (2020), Another Crossing: Artists Revisit the Mayflower Voyage (2022) and British Art Show 9 (2022-23).<br/><br/>You’ll have support to pursue your own research directions through the university’s interdisciplinary art, design and media facilities and our specialist library: examining the complex process of design, museum curatorship and interpretation; interrogating theories of exhibition and display, audiences and museology; and initiating research projects focused on the practical, pedagogical and theoretical questions underpinning museum education and audience outreach.<br/><br/>Through your investigation of the components and conventions of exhibition display, community and audience outreach and museum education, you will be prepared to enter the workplace in a wide range of roles in museums, curation, heritage and arts management, as well as for further postgraduate research.<br/><br/>Offered within the context of a specialist arts university, this programme is focused on the future of the museum. Through your investigation of the components and conventions of exhibition display, community and audience outreach and museum education, you will be prepared to enter the workplace in a wide range of roles. Graduates become museum educators, curators, cultural programme managers, art critics, museum outreach coordinators, heritage and public arts professionals, or alternatively specialise further in postgraduate research.