Gallery staff and Courtauld academics will jointly teach a 12-week elective with places for 12 of the 48 people on the MA Curating.
Students training as curators at the Courtauld Institute of Art will spend part of their degree working with the National Portrait Gallery, under a new partnership between the two London institutions. The first group will take a gallery-based module in spring 2028.
The course is the Courtauld’s MA Curating. People who start it in 2027 will be the first to take the module, and after that it will be offered to each new intake every year.
The elective is called Working within Institutions. It lasts 12 weeks and has 12 places for the 48 people on the MA. Courtauld academics and gallery professionals will share the teaching, and students will be able to use the gallery’s archive and learn from the people who work there.
Much of the work is about what happens behind the scenes, from looking after the portraits and adding to the collection to deciding how it is displayed. Students will also follow how a major exhibition is put together, and study the gallery’s learning programmes and its work on audiences and access.
Mark Hallett, the Courtauld’s director, said the partnership came out of a year of talks with Victoria Siddall, who leads the gallery, about a “shared ambition to train a new generation of brilliant curators”. He said practical experience should be as central to the degree as theory, so graduates are ready to work in the sector straight away. Siddall said she hoped the collaboration would “create meaningful opportunities for students” and help shape the sector’s future. It would also inform the gallery’s own thinking about what a museum can be today, she said.
A Courtauld spokesperson said the module would be one of several placement options on the course. The difference, the spokesperson said, is that this is a long-term formal collaboration, which could lead to jointly supervised dissertations and postgraduate research.
The MA is currently taught at Vernon Square, a Courtauld site a short walk from King’s Cross. The institute’s academic home at Somerset House on the Strand is being redeveloped and has been closed to students since 2018.
Two curators, Devika Singh and Sofia Gotti, run the programme. Singh previously worked at Tate Modern, where her brief was international art, and in 2025 she organised the Voices strand at the Paris Photo fair. Gotti helped put together the Venice Biennale in 2024 as a member of its curating team. This October the pair take charge of Spotlight at Frieze Masters in London, as guest curators of that part of the fair.
The partnership comes three years after the National Portrait Gallery reopened following a major redevelopment.
Students who join the MA Curating in 2027 will be the first to take it, in spring 2028.
The 12-week elective has 12 places for the 48 people on the programme.
At Vernon Square, a Courtauld site near King's Cross. Somerset House on the Strand is being redeveloped and has been closed to students since 2018.
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