I would like to point out that the majority of that wordle was made through the statements of professionals.

I don’t like to define it. As the wordle suggested, the definition is wide-ranging and complex. I argue against the trend of using the term “curator” as someone who chooses a top ten or “selects”/ “highlights” news stories. Real Curators have a responsibility beyond that of their own ego or self-importance.

Your wordie doesn’t reveal anything that would separate the real experts from the imitators.

And all of the quotes on ‘the functions of curators’ page equally apply to the best of the online curators that you feel aren’t qualified to use the term.

“Traditionally, a curator or keeper of a cultural heritage institution (e.g., gallery, museum, or archive) is a content specialist responsible for an institution’s collections.”
–
“Wayfinding encompasses all of the ways in which people and animals orient themselves in physical space and navigate from place to place.”
–
“Editing is the process of selecting and preparing language, images, sound, video, or film through processes of correction, condensation, organization, and other modifications in various media.”

- Wikipedia

http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=12071

Anyone seen it?

Isn’t the whole museum object display thing about learning about people/culture/history/how we classify the world? (I would refer you to the book Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads here… it talks about how people started classifying and displaying objects in natural history museums).

So I would put it to you this way. Curators-proper should think about why celebrity “curators” are such a draw, in their “celebrity.” Can museum curators stop being so behind-the-scenes and create the REAL transparency between curator and visitor that people imagine they are getting from having a “curator” they read about in tabloids “curate” a show?

Just like people want to know the history of the artists whose art they look at (why did they paint that? etc) I think people would like to know more about why curators and other museum employees choose certain things to research… why they choose to word things in one way and not the other… how they have personally interacted with the pieces (did they order conservation efforts for a certain object? had they done field work in that geographic area? do they have some unique theories?)I think museums try to be “the institution” and not THE PEOPLE BEHIND THE SCENES and people relate to people, not to objects and not to edifices…that’s why the average person just thinks museum exhibits “appear” and doesn’t think about the people who make it possible. The average person does not know/care what the definition of curator is AND I AGREE THAT THAT IS A NEGATIVE THING.

But we don’t tell them any differently. By keeping curators safely in the background (“pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!”), we open the word up to be anyone’s.

@Genevieve – True. The job remit can be flexible, but we can assume that “curator” is that profession at the vanguard of museum work. Collection managers, to me, tend to be experts in the “backroom” side of things that enable museums to do their work. Yeah, in a lot of places this can be one person.

@Paul – Yeah, it may be too late. I would like its still worth reacting to though.

@Tristan – I’ve been speaking to Elizabeth Schlatter a lot recently. That article influenced my reasons to write this.

@Kua – I made this point on twitter, in the difference between journalism being affected by “social journalism” or “citizen journalism” and what’s happening with curators and museums. It will do something very odd to museums is because museums are not structured as a mass-media. Newspapers, television, music survive on big numbers and were undone by fractures in the status quo. I wonder if the “Museum industry” is big enough to go through such a similar change and remain anything like the same.

@xensen – I would like to think I believe in progress

@Morgan – Shaq didn’t curate a damn thing. He put his name to a show and probably said, “Yup, I like all of that”. There’s also some level of expertise required, isn’t there? Make it hard to separate the verb, the noun and the knowledge.

@Elizabeth – Hello there. Is it because responsibility and trust is part of a curator’s skillset, which can’t be bounded around so easily?

Another way of thinking of it–you are not a punk. Just a thought. ;)

Once every Web-based (or print-based) “it” kid (and Shaq!) became a “curator” the term essentially was devalued.

Similarly, any dope can call themselves an “exhibit designer” but that doesn’t mean I’d want to work with them on a project.

At the end of the day, I just want to know if someone has a track record of “delivering the goods” — whatever they call themselves.

Real “curation” is an act of creation of its own: not just “selecting” things, but being part of the context in which these things are created and having a fully-formed intellectual worldview that allows the curator to engage in an act of expression that is often as rich as the works they choose to present.

A curator establishes relationships between objects and ideas. A curator puts things into a cultural context. A curator expresses their own cultural background.

If you go to an art show, it is often helpful to know who the curator is. While a show could be experienced in a valid way without knowing about the curator’s worldview, it is arguably enhanced by such understanding.

Where does that leave us? Some people probably are good curators of some things in the context of the web and digital culture. Most probably are not.

I suspect the good curators will become evident over the course of time, and will be worthy of the title. The rest will be editors, filters, and choosers, and it should be equally obvious who they are.

If this were not true, then Digg would be an engine for curation, which it clearly is not.