Curation
The art of creating value by providing context and meaning to apparently disconnected information bits
Robin Good and
Curation
Curating = Unpacking for a General Audience
Thomas B. Campbell, Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, shares in this TED video, his journey to become a respected museum curator, and the valuable discoveries and insights realized along the way.
This passage, in particular, struck with me louder than a thousand words:
"We live in an age of ubiquitous information, and sort of "just add water" expertise, but there's nothing that compares with the presentation of significant objects in a well-told narrative... what the curator does, the interpretation of a complex, esoteric subject, in a way that retains the integrity of the subject, that makes it -- unpacks it for a general audience."
There is an extreme kind of philosophical skepticism – dating back to the ancient Greek Pyrrho – that there is no such thing as “truth” or the answer. We have only interpretations.
Into the brave and reckless hearts of explorers
The value of curation is in the interpretation for an audience
we have become a generation of collectors cosplaying as curators. We collect experiences like they are limited edition prints. We collect relationships like we are building some kind of social portfolio. We collect hobbies and side projects and books we will never read and clothes we will never wear and ceramic mugs we definitely do not need. Then... See more
Emma • You’re a Collector Pretending to Be a Curator
The most beautiful museums in the world are not the biggest ones. They are the ones where someone cared enough to be selective. To have a vision. To understand that curation is an act of love and restraint and deep intentionality.
Your life deserves that same care. Stop collecting. Start curating.
Your life deserves that same care. Stop collecting. Start curating.
Emma • You’re a Collector Pretending to Be a Curator
We are hungry for experts, sense makers and curators.
The problem, now so drastically different from a decade ago, is not what to read/buy/eat/watch/etc but what is the best thing to read/buy/eat/watch/etc.
people are hungry for curation
In a world of perpetual data overload, [curation] implies information design and selectivity: the channeling, filtering, and organization into intelligible and usable information; the digging up of new or long ignored cultural corpora. Most of these corpora are simply sitting in storage: less than 1% of the Smithsonian Institution’s permanent... See more
Todd Presner • The Digital Humanities Manifesto 2.0
I think this is where true taste and character come into play - where curators with a genuine edge, a real sense of intuition, and a deeper understanding of culture begin to stand out. It’s not just about liking the right things - it’s about knowing why they matter, and how to place them in context. The best curators aren’t just aesthetically... See more