Graduate Program Overview

The Art of Living: 25-year old Kelsey Quillen from Roanoke, Virginia is earning a Masters in Museum Management. More »

The Department of Art, Music and Design at Seton Hall University offers a Master of Arts (M.A.) in Museum Professions. The program prepares students for professional careers in museums and other cultural institutions through challenging coursework in:

• museum history and theory
• the interpretation of visual and material culture
• museum management
• resource development
• legal issues
• collections management and care
• museum education
• museum technologies
• exhibition development

Annual summer seminars in Paris, Rome, or Berlin further enrich the curriculum.

The Master of Arts in Museum Professions is designed for individuals interested in pursuing careers in museums or related cultural institutions. Combining structure with flexibility, this 39-credit program offers four professional tracks:

I. Museum Education
II. Museum Management
III. Museum Registration
IV. Exhibition Development

These diverse offerings are provided through cooperation with other departments and schools at Seton Hall University, and through collaboration with museums and museum professionals who serve as advisers and faculty for the program.

Museums have become complex, multipurpose organizations. The Master of Arts in Museum Professions is designed to meet their need for professionally trained employees. This program is designed for recent college graduates, people seeking a career change, and museum employees who wish to improve their skills.

Courses are offered in the evenings and on Saturdays to accommodate both full-time and part-time students.

Students are required to complete a Masters Project to receive their MA degree.

The Museum Professions program accepts full-time, part-time, dual degree, and non-matriculating students. Non-matriculating students must complete an application to be accepted as program affiliates. 

Only students officially affiliated with the program are permitted to register for any course offerings.

Student Designations

Full-time Students are defined as students taking 3 courses (9 credits) in a semester.  Students need special permission to take more than 3 credits in any one semester.

Part-time Students are defined as students taking 1 or 2 courses (3 or 6 credits, respectively) in a semester.

Dual Degree Students are students who are currently undergraduate students in Seton Hall University’s College of Arts and Sciences and who have been accepted into the Dual Degree program.

Non-Matriculating Students are students who are not currently accepted into either the M.A. Program or the Dual Degree program and have successfully applied for permission to take courses offered through the Museum Professions program.

Student Body Information

Today's museums, as part of their mission statements, have declared their determination to hire their personnel with serious attention to diversity and to open their doors to represent a broad cross section of the population. From the very inception of this MA program, we, too, are dedicated to diversity. It has been our goal to meet the needs of today's museums, and to provide them with employees of diverse ages, from many parts of the country and world, of varying backgrounds, and with different talents and points of view.

While the greater number of students are recent graduates, or out of college within the last five years, about one quarter of the students are in the business world, in mid career, and they are ready for change. In addition, there are women who have devoted themselves to bringing up their children and now have the freedom to enter the museum world. We have enrolled persons from a variety of occupations, such as lawyers, teachers, corporate executives, and retired naval officers. The one thing they have in common is the wish to become a part of the world of the arts.

Roughly one-half of our student body comes from the tri-state area (New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania). The remaining half come to the program from other states or abroad. Over the years students have originated from nearly all the states in the United States as well as from Puerto Rico, Spain, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan.

Students in the program have majored, at the undergraduate level, in fields ranging from accounting to zoology. It is required, however, that each student has taken at least four undergraduate courses in a “museum field,” i.e., anthropology, archaeology, biology, art history, or history. Students who have not taken these courses can complete them while being enrolled in the graduate program.