Comments on: Curator: meme in motion

By: abhi

abhi — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 14:13:58 +0000

hi – stumbled across your post and it's beautiful. especially, "Real curators think with their collections. The collections are intelligence, memory, conceptual architecture made manifest. I love the idea that someone would take up this function in the digital world. "

By: Bradley Kay

Bradley Kay — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 21:13:50 +0000

This is interesting. I especially like the thought..."Real curators think with their collections. The collections are intelligence, memory, conceptual architecture made manifest. I love the idea that someone would take up this function in the digital world."

I recently wrote a post on The Third Place, "Behold! The Agency Curator Has Arrived" in which I described a world where employees of advertising, marketing and communications firms started to think of themselves as curators rather than just functions (e.g., digital strategist, account planner, data, accounting, etc.). I believe this label alone would go a long way in helping individuals understand that they have a meta level purpose and responsibility to making their agencies great. Check it out and let me know what you think.

By: Dustin

Dustin — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 14:48:09 +0000

The museum itself has long had a kind of "modern" cachet. In the late 19th century, the use of the word "museum" as part of magazine titles was quite common; magazines wanted to show that they were a collection (probably a "curated" collection) of all that was going in in the culture. Department stores, from which museums at the time had derived much of their inspiration for presentation and arrangement of cultural material, borrowed them back in their own displays. One (which one escpaes me -- Harrod's, maybe) even printed up an "exhibition catalogue" that guided shoppers through the world of goods, with culturally-themes "exhibits" along the way.

The connection, I think, is with ordering chaos. Curators bring order to/impose order on the "messiness" of cultural life. Certainly the late 19th century was a time of great anxiety about the pressures and disorder of the "modern" world, as expressed by folks like Simmel, Freud, and the rest. Today the same pressures are expressed all the time; we've even got a new crop of social neuroses (ADD, OCD, anorexia, autism, etc.) that reflect something of a breakdown of the ability to choose in an age of overwhelming plenty. (Note: there are people who have actual diseases, and I'm not trying to minimize the reality of their conditions; I'm pointing instead to the casual use of those diseases to describe one's inability to function, e.g. "I'm so ADD today!")

Today the overwhelming plentitude is informational, not material, but it seems the reaction is the same -- find organizers to pin it down and put it on display. Imbue them with the power to filter, shape, and ultimately construct our view of the culture around us. ANd that seems natural, except at the back of my head is the niggling awareness that currators/museums show us *dead* things...

By: Donald A. Coffin

Donald A. Coffin — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 21:08:49 +0000

I can't read or hear the word "curator" without hearing James Cagney, in the film Ragtime, saying to the curator of the museum, that as long as those men were occupying the museum, "you are the cur-A-tor or nothing."

By: IshMEL

IshMEL — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 22:54:15 +0000

Somewhat on topic -- paper on origins of memes I thought you'd be interested in:

http://www.cylegage.com/lulz/

By: Virginia Postrel

Virginia Postrel — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 07:34:06 +0000

I agree that the word they're looking for is editor. Putting together a conference like PopTech is very much like putting together an issue of a magazine. But people don't know what editors do, and editing sounds boring and old-school. Here's a talk I gave on "the age of the editor": http://www.reason.com/news/show/35551.html

By: Jim Carfrae

Jim Carfrae — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 13:53:55 +0000

Grant, very nice post. I think the magic is in your line "Real curators think with their collections." What is allowed to be known and the way it is assembled is more than a presentation choice, it is the defining of something; adding insight or inspiration to the pool of wisdom. If the person is only communicating or clarifying, then maybe they only want to be a curator.

By: Tom Guarriello

Tom Guarriello — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 10:43:47 +0000

Yes, Grant, we're all hearing this term pop up a lot these days. I find myself thinking of a "concierge" when I hear it; someone who is very familiar with her/his local area, has multiple insider connections, can steer you to the right place once you make the clearest request. After gaining confidence in a good concierge, you find yourself seeking recommendations without hesitation, thinking, "Oh, Serge will know!" If that's not curating in Rubel's sense, then I'd like one curator and one concierge, please!

By: Jeff Cobb

Jeff Cobb — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 23:03:23 +0000

Rubel does at least say that he doesn't mean editor, but nonetheless, I do think there is too much of a tendency at this point to see the digital curator role as some combination of aggregation and editing. The points you make here are excellent and add a much needed sense of focus and discipline to what is all too likely to evolve into another haphazard buzzword. I particularly like "Real curators think with their collections. The collections are intelligence, memory, conceptual architecture made manifest." In addition to ability, the thinking part simply takes time, and that is what seems to be the missing element in so much of the effort to churn content into Web pages (a sin of which I have certainly been guilty myself). Thanks for a great post. –Jeff

By: srp

srp — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 01:44:11 +0000

James Lileks has amassed a large collection of motel postcards, amusingly captioned, along with stock certificates, foreign money, and so on. He spends a lot of effort ruminating about fragments of the past and what they mean. Perhaps his work is more like the curating Grant has in mind.