WORLD OF ART, School for curators and
critics of contemporary art,
Year 14
Self-reflection and Responsible Practice in the World of Art
World of Art School is successfully completing
its 14^th Season

Already from 1997, the World of Art has been the sole program in Slovenia and one of the rare in the broader region of Central, Eastern and Southern Europe aimed towards practical and theoretical education in the field of contemporary art. It comes out of a premise that future experts need and should be taught the skills and methods, along with gaining knowledge and insight into the critical and theoretical apparatus as all this should eventually help them when tackling the complex matter of the world of art. In recent years, World of Art has developed into a methodologically stronger and complex two-year school adapted to modern-day theoretical and artistic practices. It includes lectures, seminars, workshops, research work, modules on the practical work of the curator, study trips. The process comprises the organisation of events, studio visits, meetings with curators, artists, theorists, and writers as well as a teamwork on the concept and curating of an exhibition under the mentors’ guide.

The program of the 14^th Season has been further upgraded with new contents and publications, international collaborations and an up-to-date web-site. We are very proud, that 14th generation of future curators will soon join the hundred graduates of the World of Art.
Eight students will finish the School in April with preparation of their final exhibition. The opening is due on the April 4, 2013 in Škuc Gallery, welcome!     

Outstanding 14^th Generation of Students
10 students enrolled in the school and eight of them made it into the 2^nd year. They've attended: 3 series of regular lectures, 4 lectures on curatorial practices of visiting lecturers, 4 seminars and workshops on writing. They visited 20 exhibitions and 5 artist's studios and experienced 3 study trips in Krakow, Graz and Zürich.
A special contribution of this generation has been a reflection of the program in the form of critiques and reports published on the WofA's web-site. These valuable texts form a very valuable study material for future generations and all those interested in contemporary art world.

World of Art on Internet
The school's web-site evolved from an initial site with some basic information on the school activities into a platform for art & theory. The World of Art students are publishing various texts, thus contributing to the in-depth reflection and analysis of the situation in the contemporary art world; the texts are archived under the section How it happened. The most important part of this text corpus are: 10 critiques and reviews of contemporary art exhibitions, 3 in-depth reports from study trips with a special overview of the visited art scene and rich visual material, 8 texts about our lectures, seminars and workshops.

Exhibition-Research Program
You had a chance to visit two exhibitions in 2012: A Mid-Stop at the 19th anniversary of the Autonomous Cultural Center Metelkova City was an overview of its vivid visual art scene, while the exhibition of art editions collected under the name Print! was on view at the International Centre of Graphic Arts. Quite soon, the World of Art students will finish their educational process and open their final exhibition on April 4, in Škuc Gallery.

World of Art Internationally
Through years, WofA has gained a specific international character and became a highly prominent school among similar and related educational programmes around the world. In the last few years, we successfully completed two international projects:
World of Art. Models of training and collaboration in contemporary arts was a year and a half long partnership focused on educating future curators, critics and journalists of contemporary art. With our partners from Vienna, Krakow and Zagreb we prepared: 5 lectures of visiting lecturers, 1 international conference, 4 study trips, 2 publications and 1 web-page. The programme was supported by CMEPIUS, a national information centre for the Lifelong Learning Programme. Furthermore, CMEPIUS selected our project as a case of good practice – one of the two from all the supported projects in the years 2010, 2011 and 2012!

ATOM² was a project of two years partnership with Postgraduate Programme in Curating at the Zurich University for the Arts, Institute Cultural Studies, Department Cultural Analysis (CH). In the frame of this project we have been developing innovative modules of training future curators, critics and contemporary art journalist. We prepared: 5 visiting lectures, 2 study excursions, 1 exhibition, 1 international on-line magazine and 1 anthology.

4 New Publications
In 2012, we published a long awaited Anthology of the World of Art, entitled Dilemmas of Curatorial Practices. The anthology includes a selection of public lectures on curatorial and institutional strategies, interviews which present the lecturers in a broader context of their work, texts on WofA's final exhibitions with visual material, and the documentation of all the School's achievements from 1997 till today etc.
In frame of the above mentioned international projects we published on-line publications: (Un)learning Together: Discourses, Moments and Conflicts that Make the World Bigger than the World of Art (vocational reader); simultaneously, our partners from Postgraduate museological curatorial studies (University Jagiellonski Krakov) published an anthology Talking about Exhibition, which presents their educational program and includes texts of partner? Experts; while the collaboration with our Swiss partner concluded with the 14th volume of On.Curating, international on-line magazine focusing on curatorial practices and theory.

World of Art on Radio Student
World of Art was a guest of Radio Student, a non-commercial, alternative urban radio station in Ljubljana: Miha Colner led an hour long conversation with Saša Nabergoj, the head of the school, and Miran Mohar, mentor of the Curatorial Course, about the new anthology Dilemmas of Curatorial Practices and informal education in the field of contemporary art in view of the School's 14 years long experiences.

Support
The 14^th Season of the WofA School has been supported by: Municipality of Ljubljana – Department for Culture and Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sport of the Republic of Slovenia. International activities have been supported by: European Commission, European Lifelong Learning. Programme (partnership Leonardo da Vinci) and Swiss Contribution.

CONTACT
SCCA– Ljubljana, Center for Contemporary Arts /
World of Art, School for curators and critics of contemporary art
(office hours:10 am–1 pm)
Head of the School: Saša Nabergoj
Assistant: Simona Žvanut
Metelkova 6, 1000 Ljubljana, phone: (01) 431 83 85
e-mail: svetumetnosti@scca-ljubljana.si
SCCA-Ljubljana on Facebook

[Published February 18, 2013]