Marko Gluhaich: Can you tell me about your role at the Sotheby’s Institute?

Tim Goossens: I am the newly appointed Program Director for the Master’s in Contemporary Art. This summer I transitioned back to the MA program where I started as a faculty member about 12 years ago.

MG: What is your vision as Program Director?

TG: Currently, we’re considering reformulating some core courses which are offered to all first-semester students in all master’s programs. Right now, I teach ‘Navigating in the Art World’. We might conceptualize this course into a more robust beginner’s course to introduce students to all the different art world players in a more substantial way.

MG: How do you imagine expanding that course from what it is now, and who are the different players you’d like to introduce?

TG: Right now, it’s a seven-week course, so it’s only one and a half credits and it’s not taught over a full semester. I introduce my students to the usual suspects: auction houses, galleries, museums, curators, critics.

But we are discussing making it into a two-semester course, so six credits, which is a big change, and go deeper into certain subjects, such as (de)acquisitions, repatriation and other law-related topics.

MG: Why is hands-on, in-the-world experience important to you pedagogically, and how do you see it benefiting students?

TG: We’re quite unique in the amount of time that we spend outside of the Institute. With our field trips we use New York, the tri-state area and the world as our classroom. We’re very career-driven at the Institute, so we want to expose students to all the possibilities.

They might come to us thinking, ‘I want to be a gallerist’, or ‘I want to be a specialist’, but there are a myriad of options in the art world – from insurance broker to art lawyer, to collection manager, to critic – that they might not have thought about initially.

MG: What does a typical class look like with you?

TG: I like to create a safe space where many different opinions can be voiced, and I like to have occasional guest speakers, again to allow for different voices. This past week, for example, I had a brilliant specialist from Joopiter join us to discuss her role there: the freedom she has to decide which auction themes to pursue, how she sources auction lots, how she approaches collectors – all those in-depth insights.

We might also grab our bags and coats and go to Phillips around the corner from the Institute, for example, or all the way to the Breuer building to see what is on view at Sotheby’s that week.

MG: How do you consider the art market in your classroom, and what questions do you raise about its influence on contemporary art?

TG: Something I reflect about a lot is how you can’t talk about contemporary art without the market. I want my students to be aware of how it influences even the production of art: how there is such a thing as art fair art, for example.

I want them to be aware of all those things, but I also want to shelter them from the market hype a bit, so that we can create space to reflect about current artistic concepts or historical themes at play in contemporary art.

We offer a critique class, for example, in which we hardly speak about the art market at all, because it centers around the concepts behind and meaning of the work of art.

MG: What makes Sotheby’s Institute unique amongst a field of arts academic spaces?

TG: We’re unique, and have been for a long time, in that we combine professional practice with in-depth education – the theoretical basis and the specialized knowledge you need to work successfully in the art world – by bringing in those professionals, but also through our fantastic work placement program.

We’re not shying away from offering those real-world experiences or access to art world professionals, because at the end of the day, students want an interesting career after they graduate.