Curation

To understand the role of a curator today, think of a sieve in a gold rush: the AI provides the massive pile of silt and sand (the data), but the curator's "taste" is the mesh that allows the worthless dirt to fall through while catching the rare, valuable nuggets of gold. Without the sieve, you just have a pile of dirt; with it, you have a... See more

The richest insights are found in overlooked sources and connections that are beyond the reach of the internet and the incentives of its curatorial algorithms. My inspiration comes from unexpected places: the yellowed pages of out-of-print software books, modern science fiction essays, the writings of early religious leaders, and unique items in... See more

everyone wants to be the plug now. The source. The moodboard in human form.

Curation is the new credibility.

The winning film argued that "total pixel space represents both the ultimate determinism and the ultimate freedom—every possibility existing simultaneously, waiting for consciousness to give it meaning through the act of choice."

In making this statement, the film suggested that creativity, above all else, is an act of curation. It's a claim that... See more

Collectors are hedging their bets. Keeping options open. Avoiding commitment because what if something better comes along. Curators make choices. They build around a vision. They understand that committing to one thing means letting go of another and that is not a loss. That is how meaning gets made.

The curator relationship operates at a fundamentally different psychological level than advertising. An algorithm might know you like blue Oxford shirts, but a tastemaker knows why a particular blue Oxford matters in a lineage of blue Oxfords. This contextual knowing, placing objects in historical and cultural frameworks rather than recommendation... See more

The more our world becomes measurable and quantifiable, the more we need spaces that preserve what can't be measured—the hunches we can't explain, the patterns we feel but can't prove.

All curation grows until it requires search, and all search grows until it requires curation.

Museums act as filters for cultural abundance. Only so much can be kept within museum storerooms or displayed in exhibitions. Limited word counts on exhibition texts require the winnowing down of very large topics to the small and essential. Many core museum functions, from the selection of what objects and information should be kept through to... See more