A minimum of a lower second class honours degree (2:2) in a relevant discipline, including culture and heritage studies, visual arts and media, languages and literature, and history.
All applications from any prospective student without a degree in a relevant area or without higher education qualifications, including from candidates with demonstrable relevant work experience and relevant professional qualifications, will be carefully considered. Applicants may be asked to supply a written response to a set text to demonstrate suitability for the course.
If your first language is not English you should have an IELTS 6.5 overall with 6.0 in each component.
Applicants are required to submit one academic or professional reference.
Visit our How to apply page for more information on:
A minimum of a lower second class honours degree (2:2) in a relevant discipline, including culture and heritage studies, visual arts and media, languages and literature, and history.
All applications from any prospective student without a degree in a relevant area or without higher education qualifications, including from candidates with demonstrable relevant work experience and relevant professional qualifications, will be carefully considered. Applicants may be asked to supply a written response to a set text to demonstrate suitability for the course.
If your first language is not English you should have an IELTS 6.5 overall with 6.0 in each component.
Applicants are required to submit one academic or professional reference.
Visit our How to apply page for more information on:
Visit our How to apply page for more information on:
Visit our How to apply page for more information on:
The Museums, Galleries and Contemporary Culture with Professional Experience MA is a unique course that offers you the opportunity to undertake an extended work placement and gain professional work experience. It is partnered with the one-year course, Museums, Galleries and Contemporary Culture MA. On the two-year course, you'll do the same taught modules as on the one-year course, but you'll have the added opportunity of doing a placement lasting from three to six months in your second year. A distinctive feature of the MA is its emphasis on learning by doing. Rather than encountering museum and gallery practice only in the classroom, you’ll explore how cultural institutions work through practical projects, site visits, case studies and direct engagement with professionals. Depending on your module choices, you can gain experience of researching and planning exhibitions, working with museum collections, researching archives, developing displays and interpretation plans, and designing learning programmes. London itself becomes part of your learning environment. Classes take place in museums and galleries as well as at our Regent Street campus, enabling you to encounter professional practice in the places where it happens. Alongside this strong professional and practical focus, the MA asks a fundamental question: who are museums and galleries for, and whose histories and experiences do they represent? Questions of social justice, equality, diversity, inclusion, accessibility and representation run through your engagement with contemporary cultural institutions. You’ll critically examine issues including participation and social inclusion, decolonisation, the restitution of museum objects, accessibility for disabled audiences and the challenge of building diverse cultural-sector workforces. You’ll explore how museums, galleries and heritage sites respond to these issues and, consequently, how they are reshaping professional practice. This includes co-designing and co-producing projects with communities, as well as rethinking approaches to interpretation, collections, audiences and institutional responsibilities. The University of Westminster is a leading provider in this academic discipline and is ranked 2nd in the UK for Art and Design Research Quality in the Complete University Guide (Subject League Table 2027) .
In addition to taking four core modules, you'll choose four modules from the list of option modules below.
As part of this course you'll do a work placement or internship in a museum or an art organisation. This will enable you to gain professional skills and consolidate the knowledge you'll acquire on the MA. Your placement or internship will take place in your second year and last between three to six months. While the University isn't able to guarantee a placement, we have a wide range of contacts, so we negotiate with partner institutions to find openings that are suitable for you to apply for. On graduating from the Museums, Galleries and Contemporary MA with Professional Experience, you'll be fully prepared to enter or re-enter the job market at a senior level. If you're unable to secure a placement that suits your interests, you can transfer instead to the one-year Museums, Galleries and Contemporary Culture MA.
The following modules are indicative of what you'll study on this course.
We aim to offer a wide range of option modules. However, availability may be affected by timetabling, staff availability, or student demand, so preferred choices cannot always be guaranteed.