the.com/curator
a professional gatekeeper who decides which dead artists you're allowed to worship today
means A person who selects, organizes, and looks after a collection — of art, objects, or, increasingly, anything — deciding what's worth showing and how.
from From Latin curare, 'to take care of,' built on cura, 'care' (the same root that gives us 'cure' and 'curate'). A curator was literally a 'carer' — in Roman usage a guardian or overseer entrusted with looking after something. The word arrived in English meaning a caretaker of minors or the insane before it settled into the museum, still doing the same job: taking care of things on everyone else's behalf.
- origin
- From Latin curare, to care — same root as cure
- roman job
- Once meant Roman officials managing public works and finances
- hidden hoards
- Museums display under 5% of their collections
- new turf
- Now curate playlists, feeds, dinner parties, and grudges
hans ulrich obrist — serpentine gallery director who has curated over 300 exhibitions worldwide since 1991
germano celant — guggenheim chief curator who defined arte povera and shaped contemporary art history through curation
okwui enwezor — first african-born director of documenta 11 in 2002, transformed global contemporary art discourse