For decades, aspiring art dealers have conventionally followed a tried-and-true path to success: graduate from college with a BA in art history, start off as a gallery assistant, rise through the ranks to become a gallery director, and maybe, one day, break off and found a new gallery. This has been the system for years — but a new program from Amsterdam arts center de Appel is out to change it.

De Appel's gallerist program, founded in collaboration with the Fair Gallery, a consortium of four European galleries, will offer students a "crash course" in all aspects of running a gallery, from filing taxes to writing press releases. "They will get experience they might also get in the field, but which might take them five years' time," said Nathalie Hartjes, coordinator of the nine-month program. The full-time course is the first of its kind to combine art-business administration — a subject currently only taught in a New York University class — with a more holistic look at the history and philosophy of art. Candidates will graduate with a certificate rather than a master's degree, although the organization is considering eventually partnering with a university for more traditional accreditation.

De Appel is best known in Europe for its well-regarded curatorial program, which has placed graduates at the helm of institutions such as Objectif Exhibitions, Kunsthalle Basel, and the Van Abbemuseum. The institution hopes to apply the curatorial program's "learn-by-doing" approach to training its budding gallerists.

The initiative is already being applauded by those in the field. "I wish there had been as open a dialogue about what it takes to start and run a gallery when we first opened," said Ed Winkleman, owner of the eponymous Chelsea gallery and author of the book "How to Start and Run a Commercial Art Gallery," which is required reading in the gallerist program. "We would have made fewer mistakes had we had the introduction into the complex workings of the business this program promises."

So, what does a gallerist training program actually look like? The six participants will draft their own mission statements, attend lectures on everything from customer care to ethics, and travel around Europe to scout artists. They will look at case studies ranging from Jeffrey Deitch's career arc ("What happens when a gallerist becomes a museum director?") to Anish Kapoor's history with Lisson Gallery ("a case study of a long-term gallerist-artist relationship, but also cutting loose the relationship"). They will study emerging markets and the history of the Western gallery system, meet top players in the field, and participate in a three-month internship program at a partnering gallery. For their final project, students will run their own booth at Basel's Liste Fair in 2013, with each student given one day to mount and man his or her own stand during the six-day event.

The opportunity to exhibit at Liste was made possible by the fair's director, Peter Bläuer, who joins New Museum curator Richard Flood, Vitiman Creative Space director Zhang Wei, and independent curator Teresa Gleadowe (wife of Tate director Nicholas Serota) on the advisory committee.

In a wise structural move, all proceeds from sales at the fair will go back toward the program itself. The rest of the funding will come from the students' €5,000 ($7,175) tuition fee, donations from nonprofits, and contributions from a to-be-determined supporting committee of blue-chip galleries. Why might a gallery invest in developing future competition? "There is a certain philanthropy involved," admitted Hartjes. "If you run a gallery for 20 to 30 years and become very successful in that, there is a certain pride in how the gallery sector has professionalized."

De Appel received 100 percent of its start-up funds from the Dutch government — surprising, considering the recent major cuts to arts funding and the government's current contentious relationship to the cultural sector. Hartjes said there is "a lot of skepticism" surrounding the program within the Netherlands, largely because some are uncomfortable with the idea of putting public tax money toward training people to work in the private sector. Once the program launches next year, promised Hartjes, it will be 100 percent privately funded.

For Hartjes, the course provides an opportunity to institutionalize — and even simply to write down and record — tricks of the trade that have previously existed only as institutional memory, transmitted between successive generations of mentors and protégés. "The sector has professionalized in the last decade, and we want to bring that a step further," she said. "More than assignments, it's about figuring out what's going on in cultural politics."

So, who is the ideal candidate for the program? De Appel is looking for students who are "ambitious, outspoken, and genuine." Most importantly, "We're not interested in people purely interested in running a gallery for its profit," said Hartjes. "The motivation needs to come from a true commitment to the arts and an understanding that the gallerist has his or her own special role to play on behalf of the artist." Applicants should already have a group of artists they are interested in working with, she added: "We won't take people fresh off the street." Hartjes expects the acceptance rate to the gallerist program to be similar to that of the curatorial program, around six to seven percent. Prospective students from Asia, the Baltics, and the United States have already expressed interest in the new venture.

The course will kick off with a five-day pilot session later this fall, though the specific date has yet to be pinned down due to the political unrest in the Netherlands. It will launch officially in September 2012. According to Hartjes, the program is not a challenge to the traditional trajectory to gallery careers, but rather "an alternative." A discursive reflection "would benefit the field and make it stronger, and also offer a bigger allowance to rethink models that already exist."