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A brief history of the word ‘curator’ at the best art books in the world
Once solely employed to describe the exhibition maker, now it's used for anyone from a celebrity music festival
programmer to a Williamsburg hipster with an iTunes account. British Art Show curator Tom Morton talks us through
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the origins of the most overused word of modern times

Tom Morton, Curator of the British Art Show

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Tweet A very short history of the word 'curator' might run as follows. In
Follow @Phaidon Ancient Rome, curatores were senior civil servants in charge of
various departments of public works, overseeing the Empire's
ARTICLE aqueducts, bathhouses and sewers. Fast forward to the medieval
period, and we encounter the curatus, a priest devoted to the care
(or 'cura') of souls. • • •

By the end of the 20th century, 'curator' came to describe a broad

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category of exhibition makers, from museum employees who spend
years working on modest, scrupulously researched displays of The Art Museum
Sumerian pottery, to freelancers who approach large scale Biennales
Hardback | English
of contemporary art as an opportunity to clear their auteurial throat.
USD$125.00
Here in the third millennium, the word curator has undergone a BUY NOW
further shift in usage. Appropriated by the marketing departments of
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businesses keen to imbue their products with an air of hard-won
distinction and borrowed avant-garde cool, it is now used to describe
anybody from the celebrity programmer of a pop festival to a fashion
stylist who puts together a 'capsule collection' from a department
store's fall/winter stock. A curator, here, is essentially a paid selector YOU MAY ALSO LIKE

Bookmark this page of stuff for sale, whether it be concert tickets or cuff links. (Notably,
commercial art galleries tend to fight shy of describing their

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A brief history of the word ‘curator’ | Art | Agenda | Phaidon 05/04/16 1:06 a.m.

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exhibitions staff as 'curators', leaving the title to professionals in the
not-for-profit sector who do not, um, profit from the works that they
Share this page choose to display).

Of course, there is a possibility that the marketeers who employ the

A·A
word 'curator' have no more interest in evoking the world of the
museum than they do of evoking Roman middle management or the
medieval church.

Perhaps they are merely responding to the wider 'curatorial turn' in

patterns of consumption outlined in New York-based literary The Story of Modern Creamier
Art Paperback | English
magazine n+1’s collection of essays What Was The Hipster? which
Paperback | English USD$39.95
argues that the current generation of fashionable young things are USD$22.95
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'prosumers' who prefer to select cultural artifacts rather than produce
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them, brandishing them 'like capital'. The 'curator' of a pop up shop Look Inside
or a boutique festival renders even this stunted form of creativity Look Inside
redundant - as the comedian Stewart Lee wrote in a recent article in
the Financial Times on his appointment as the 'curator' of a weekend
of comedy at a major London arts venue "I am a curator. What a
dead word. It sounds like somebody stirring turds in a toilet bowl with
a stick." So quite what Lee would make of the mission statement of
the astonishingly named Seattle PR firm Curator is fun to
contemplate. Without a trace of historical awareness, the company's
website avers that "The most effective brands - knowing the
influence of today's empowered consumer - will create products,
services or experiences that can stand-up to the conversation of the
marketplace." It’s a long way from the public museum, let alone
The Story of Art
aqueduct administration or the care of the eternal soul. The Art of Forgery
Paperback | English
Hardback | English
USD$39.95
USD$35.00
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Tom Morton, Curator of the British Art Show
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@samatlounge @LondonBookFair Ah, thanks Sam!

Lovely to be amongst such handsome company
also, @Phaidon @FaberBooks.
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Loved it, thanks. Great read between stir and stir. ​@Phaidon

Like · Reply · Apr 16, 2014 11:09am Fascinating account of how Alfred #Stieglitz
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