The Department of Cultural Analysis and Mediation (DKV) is part of a long institutional tradition within Zurich University of the Arts. Its roots go back to the early days of its predecessor institutions at the end of the 19th century. The Art Education section has evolved from the specialist training programmes for art teachers, drawing and craft teachers at the School of Applied Arts, the School of Design, and the Zurich University of the Arts (HGKZ). Basic design training in the form of preparatory classes had been offered since 1894: the former ‘Vorkurs’ was incorporated into the preparatory course in design, and the Gewerbemuseum (now the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich) was founded in 1875. On the occasion of its centenary in 1978, the HGKZ formulated its mission as ‘Education and design for people and the environment’. To this day – and since 2007 within the framework of the newly founded ZHdK – the DKV understands artistic, design, educational and academic practice as being in constant dialogue with social developments.
Development since 2007
The DKV was established in 2007 as one of the five departments of the new Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK). On the one hand, the DKV brought together organisational units from the former Zurich University of Art and Design (hgkz): the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich, the preparatory design course, the Lehrberufe für Bildnerisches Gestalten (now: Lehrpersonen für Bildende Kunst auf Stufe Sek II), and one of the first research institutes at the predecessor institution, the Institute for Cultural Studies in the Arts (ICS). With the founding of the ZHdK – and the transdisciplinary potential arising from the merger – new programmes were also developed within the DKV’s teaching and research, which, in close proximity to the production-oriented offerings, focused on the interactions between the arts and the sciences as well as on reflective competence. At its founding in 2007, the DKV comprised the following organisational units: Bachelor’s and Master’s in Art Education, Master’s in Transdisciplinary Studies in the Arts, and Z-modules as transdisciplinary compulsory-elective courses at Bachelor’s level (discontinued with the introduction of the new study model). In research: the Institute of Art Education, the Institute for Cultural Studies in the Arts, and the Centre for Cultural Law (part of the Rectorate from 2010). In the non-university sector, the department of preparatory studies with the design propaedeutic and continuing education (later operated as the Centre for Continuing Education), as well as the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich.
In 2010, the Zurich University of Applied Sciences Council approved the new research focus on transdisciplinarity, and the Institute for Theory (now Aesthetic Theory) was newly assigned to the DKV. From 2008, the DKV ran the Research Unit Creative Industries and the Incubator and regularly published reports on the creative industries; the unit was transferred in 2019 to the newly founded Zurich Centre for Creative Economies (ZCCE) (part of the Rectorate since 2021). From 2017, three PhD programmes were funded by Swissuniversities: Transdisciplinary Artistic PhD, Didactics of Art & Design, and Epistemologies of Aesthetic Practices. The University Council dissolved the institutes in 2018; since then, the research priorities have been: Art Education, Aesthetics, Cultural Analysis in the Arts and Transdisciplinarity.
With the introduction of the new study model, the Cultural Critique degree programme was established, comprising the two major programmes Curatorial Studies and Cultural Journalism (formerly two specialisations within the Master’s in Art Education), and the new major programme Critical Social Practice in Art Education; in addition, the DKV runs 19 minor programmes.