Since 1994, De Appel organizes the ten-month long Curatorial Programme (CP), founded by former director Saskia Bos. The programme offers promising international exhibition makers a range of experiences and expertise that allows them to further develop their profession and career. In the coming years, the structurally renewed Curatorial Programme will contribute more actively to the programming of De Appel and will become more embedded in the functioning and structure of the institution.

The type of knowledge that is valuable within a curatorial training programme is highly dependent on the rapidly changing context of the contemporary world – the way artists work, the specific characteristics of the globalized (art) world, the relationship between art and the market, and shifts in the different roles of the curator (as author, project manager, partner, mediator, etc.). The artistic practice is also developing, blurring the boundaries between artist and curator. This increasingly hybrid reality requires new types of curators with more diverse backgrounds and practices. The CP addresses these shifts, explores the relationship between these developments with great attention to their social and societal relevance, and thus retains a close connection with everyday reality.

In the first phase of the renewed Curatorial Programme, emphasis is placed on ‘immersion’ within the field through meetings and social gatherings with prominent curators, art institutions and artists, for which various travels to European cities are organized. The programme focuses on both a theoretical and a pragmatic approach to curatorship and a continuous critical questioning and discussion of curatorial models. Special emphasis is given to the ethics of the profession and its changing parameters, always discussed in relationship to the programme of De Appel, as well as more global shifts in curating. As the programme progresses, importance is increasingly given to a more active workshop model in which (inter)national curators are invited to talk about pragmatic, theoretical and sociopolitical positions within curating, complemented with a series of lectures by other prominent voices from the (inter)national art world. The goal of this series of three to four-day workshops (eight in total per year) is to develop a two-year exploration to get to a more deliberate and future-oriented ecology of curatorship, something which is emphasized through the theme of de-universalization.

Each year, the programme culminates in a collaborative project, which is curated by the participants themselves. The projects can take several forms: festivals, radio broadcasts, presentations or exhibitions. This substantive and formal openness remains a key aspect of the programme, since the project acts as a potential barometer for international trends in terms of progressive exhibition formats. The participants are also expected to carry out research in the archives of De Appel.

The participants of the CP are the ambassadors of De Appel who will carry their CP experience towards other contexts in the world. Many participants of the programme hold prominent positions in important institutions, including Defne Ayas (director of Witte de With, Rotterdam), Nikita Yingqian Cai (curator Guangdong Times Museum, China), Annie Fletcher (curator at the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven), Adam Szymczyk (director of Documenta 14) and Tobias Berger (director CPS, Hong Kong). In addition, a new generation of more recent participants is also internationally active: Kate Strain (director Grazer Kunstverein, Graz), Aneta Rostkowska (curator Akademie der Kunste der Welt, Cologne), Lara Khaldi (curator Art Dubai Projects 2015), Natasha Ginwala (curator Contour Biennial, Mechelen and curatorial advisor Documenta 14), Luis Silva (director Kunsthalle Lisbon), Clare Butcher (education coordinator Documenta 14) and Inti Guerrero (curator Tate, London.

Since 2013, De Appel has been a prominent partner in a collaboration between CCS Bard College, New York; LUMA Foundation, Arles; Central Saint Martins, London; Goldsmiths University, London; Afterall: Exhibition Histories; University of Gothenburg and V-A-C Foundation, Moscow. Within this partnership, two international symposia have been organized: The Curatorial Conundrum (New York) and How Institutions Think (Arles) and a book has been published in the context of the first symposium.

De Appel Curatorial Programma holds a registration by Centraal Register Kort Beroeps Onderwijs (CRKBO).