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2021: Creating a Lexicon of Future
C is for Curate
You might not be familiar with the term ‘curate’ or ‘curating’. Or you might think of the term as it pertains to the career of a museum or art curator.
To curate is “to select, organize, and present (online content, merchandise, information, etc.), typically using professional or expert knowledge”.
Put simply, to curate is to look after and preserve. ~ Want to simplify? Become the curator of your life.
The word “curate” comes from the Latin “curatus,” the past participle of “curare,” which means “to take care of.” For years, in museums and archives, curators did just that: polishing finishes, inspecting canvases, layering archival tissue. The idea of curators as creative agents in their own right, and master of the kind of the sociopolitical commentary that underpins many of today’s exhibitions, is relatively new.
In “The Culture of Curating,” Paul O’Neill cites 1987 as a turning point for the role. That year, Le Magasin, an art center in France, introduced Europe’s first postgraduate curatorial training program, and the Art History/Museum Studies pathway of the Whitney Independent Study Program was renamed Curatorial and Critical Studies.
That year, Mr. O’Neill writes, “represents a significant departure in the understanding of curatorship, from vocational work with collections in institutional contexts to a potentially independent, critically-engaged and experimental form of exhibition-making practice.”
“I see a curator as a catalyst, generator and motivator — a sparring partner, accompanying the artist while they build a show, and a bridge builder, creating a bridge to the public.” Hans-Ulrich Obrist. ~ Everyone’s a Curator Now
