I am one of those curators who has never taken a course in curating.
Being from Canada, I came of age (artistically speaking, if you will)
in what we call "artist-run culture" --our publicly funded gallery
and production spaces whose boards are made up (usually) entirely by
artists, or at least artsy-fartsies.  When I (with Ryan Rice, Eric
Robertson and lots of support from others) co-founded Nation 2
Nation, a First Nations (Aboriginal) artist collective, one of our
goals was to make exhibitions happen for ourselves.  It seemed only
natural and right when we started thematicizing (I hope you will
accept the new verb) and grouping artists, formats and ideas together.

One of our projects is called CyberPowWow, a combination chat space,
virtual gallery/library, plus real-life component.  I did the project
because I myself was chatting, surfing and generally completely
jumping onto the WWW bandwagon.  But despite all that i already knew
about the Internet, I still had to learn so much.  I had to learn
Ipscrae, the proprietary language of the chat software (Palace); I
had to learn how to turn my own computer into a PalaceServer, and
later, how to configure my files for a newer, better version of the
server software; I had to learn about Colour Look-Up Tables and
anti-aliasing and I had to teach the artists and the audience how to
use the chat software.  (I'm not complaining or anything, it was
totally worth it!)  I'm just telling you all this to lead up to this
point: a course would not have helped me.  I'm am very interested to
know if others feel this way about the new media projects they have
done (either as artists or as curators).

The thing with New Media is that constant learning curve.  And I'm
not just talking about the nuts and bolts.  The theory and the work
produced are also moving at hyperspeed.  No matter how much you know,
you don't know enough.  Even with a degree in New Media curating, you
would still need to learn so much just to do your project.  So should
we bother to go for a degree?  I am asking myself this question for
real.

There are certainly courses (btw, I use the words "class" and
"course" interchangeably, do you?) I'd like to take right now
including that "METADATING THE IMAGE" Master Class by Lev Manovich;
perhaps an object-oriented scripting course, and a history of
Interactive/web/code Art.  What are some of the classes being taught
in the New Media Curating program(s?) that exist, or what are some
that this group would like to see?

Yers,
skawennati