Modern and Contemporary Art: History, Curating and Criticism MSc postgraduate personal statement example

Personal statement example

Most days at the framing shop where I work, I cut window mounts. The decision that matters is rarely the colour. It is how much border to leave and whether the bottom margin should be slightly deeper than the top so the image does not appear to sink. Customers rarely notice when this is right, but they notice when it is wrong. Four years of this has made me attentive to the small choices that shape how a work is seen before anyone reads a label. That attention is what I want to develop, with historical and critical depth, through postgraduate study in modern and contemporary art, history, curating and criticism.

My undergraduate degree was in Fine Art, specialising in printmaking. Making screenprints and etchings taught me how processes leave traces: registration marks, plate tone, the slight differences between impressions in an edition. Alongside studio work I took every art history option I could. In my final year I realised I was spending more time in the library than in the print room. My dissertation examined British newspaper coverage in 1976 of the Tate's purchase of Carl Andre's Equivalent VIII, the arrangement of firebricks that became known as 'the bricks'. I compared tabloid and broadsheet reports with the gallery's own public statements. I argued that much of the hostility was less about the object than about public money and who was entitled to judge value. The project showed me that a work's meaning is partly produced by the institutions and media around it. That is why I want to study curating and criticism together rather than separately.

Since graduating I have worked full-time as a picture framer. The job is practical: measuring, cutting, choosing conservation board and UV-filtering glazing, and explaining to customers why a cheap clip frame will fade a watercolour. I handle a wide range of objects, from children's paintings to limited-edition prints and the occasional older work on paper, which I refer to my manager if it needs specialist attention. I have learned to talk clearly with people who care about an object for very different reasons. It is a useful corrective to the assumption that everyone looks at art the same way.

I also volunteer at a community arts centre, helping to install its rotating exhibitions of local artists. My role is modest. I measure walls, level hanging rails, and sometimes suggest a sequence when the coordinator asks. Hanging a group show of amateur landscape painters last spring, we moved one large canvas three times before the room felt balanced. It reminded me how much curatorial thinking happens through trial and physical adjustment rather than in a written rationale.

My reading since university has focused on how critics and institutions write about recent art. Brian O'Doherty's Inside the White Cube changed how I see the neutral gallery space I spend weekends helping to prepare. Rosalind Krauss's essay on sculpture in the expanded field gave me a vocabulary for works like Andre's that my dissertation lacked. I keep notes on exhibitions I visit, partly as practice in writing concisely about what I have seen.

Outside work I attend a weekly life-drawing group, which keeps my hand and eye in practice. I am not trying to return to studio work, but drawing slowly is still the best way I know to look properly.

I am applying now because I want structured, rigorous training in research and critical writing that framing and volunteering cannot give me. I hope to bring a maker's understanding of materials and a practical sense of display. I also bring an interest in how art reaches audiences beyond specialist circles.