Anna studied MA Art History and Curating from September 2015 to September 2016. Since April 2017 she has been working as a Curator in Vaasa City Museums in Finland.
“Vaasa City Museums consists of four different museums: Kuntsi Museum of Modern Art, Tikanoja Art Museum, Ostrobothnian Museum, and Vaasa Art Gallery. I work in Exhibition Operations and our team of three people is responsible for the exhibitions in all four museums. In this position, I have a chance to work with both contemporary and classical art, and on occasion also with historical exhibitions.
“Though I am currently working in Finland and there are differences to UK in terms of legislation, the structure of the museum field, and in some general practices, I have found the MA programme extremely useful. In the Curatorial Practices module we went through all the phases of curating and organising an exhibition in an art gallery. This is what I now do every day. As I am working on several projects in different stages at the same time, it is great that I had an opportunity to work on a project from start to finish already during my studies.
“I enjoyed being able to work with and learn from professionals from different organisations. I volunteered in the Communications and Marketing Team of the Barber Institute of Fine Arts, doing background research for social media updates. It was nice to get experience in that, and also to get to know the Barber Institute and museum staff a bit better.
“I also did a placement at the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists (RBSA) doing background research for an exhibition about William Gear. It was a good opportunity to focus a bit more in one phase of the exhibition planning, and also to learn more about Gear. The placement was also a good chance to get to see how an artist-led organisation works and to meet new people. Compared to Finland, there are significantly more volunteers working in galleries in the UK, and it was very interesting to discuss with the volunteers of the RBSA and learn about their background and reasons to be involved with the gallery and art in general.”