With performance art increasingly entering the museological mainstream — along with the mainstream mainstream, courtesy of one James Franco — it was only a matter of time before an art school launched a performance-art curating program. Now Wesleyan University (not exactly an art school, but pretty arty, and ARTINFO would know) has gone and done it, creating a new Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance, the first post-graduate offering of its kind in the United States.

Run by Samuel Miller, president of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and former executive director of the Jacob's Pillow dance festival, the institute will open this summer with "a nine-month professional certificate program," according to a university announcement. The course of study, targeted at "early and mid-career working professionals," will include "artistic and curatorial practice, social and cultural context, and entrepreneurial strategies."

As the new program is mainly a correspondence program — somewhat ironically, given performance art's focus on actual, physical presence — students will do their work online for most of the year, with three "on-campus intensives" of varying lengths involving artists-in-residence taking place in Middletown, Connecticut. 

"What we're looking for is a program that examines and takes advantage of the best features of both visual arts, media arts practices and performing arts," Miller said in an interview with Culturebot, an arts Web site. "We're not trying to impose the visual arts practice on performing arts or vice versa." In light of the recession, there will be an emphasis on how to use philanthropy and the "gift economy" to make things happen.

The institute is operating in partnership with New York's Danspace Project, and faculty will include Doryun Chong, an associate painting and sculpture curator at MoMA.

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