Please Stop Using the Word “Curated”
Simply picking or putting things together that supposedly go well together is not what curating is fundamentally about.
Curated menus. Curated lists. Curated websites. Curated boxes and baskets. Curated, curated, curated.
This word has exploded in popularity over the past fifteen years. In so doing, it has lost much of its meaning. Today, the word is often lazily added to an otherwise mundane product to lend it an air of exclusivity or prestige. Essentially used as a marketing term, it implies that a selection presented to you has been hand-picked, and not just by anyone, but by someone knowledgeable, someone in the know.
But simply picking or putting things together that supposedly go well together is not what curating is fundamentally about. These “expert” pickers and choosers call their work curating and view themselves as curators. This term had previously been reserved for people who oversee museum collections and work on exhibitions.
When a museum curator organizes an exhibition, far more goes into it than just picking and choosing the works of art to be included in the exhibition, where to place them, or even writing the didactics (the text on the walls).
