The rise of curation in popular culture
Has the curator supplanted the creator in popular imagination? The Globe and Mail examines the rise of curation as a profession and an art form.
The curator’s job has been, among other things, to find the through line. She provides a practical function, telling us who to trust with our attention; moreover, she fulfills an emotional-psychological one, by making sense of a world overrun with entities and ideas. But once curators themselves proliferate, and the curators need curating, and the notion of “curation” becomes so romantic that dilettantes assume the pose until it’s commonplace – then everyone and no one is a curator, and curation is everything and nothing, and nothing makes sense again. What happens when there are no more arbiters of taste, no rank of persons who, through instinct, experience and training, know best?
— Megan
In the Weirder-than-Fiction department: Pipino, Gentleman Thief.
“He was best known for stealing masterworks from the homes of Venice’s nobility and was thought to have excellent taste in art. He was also versatile: He once infiltrated the Swiss Consulate and made off with 150 million lira in cash. In the late 1970s, he tailed Cary Grant, who portrayed one of the most famous thieves in film history, and robbed him while he slept in his hotel room. Later, he freed a forlorn gorilla from the zoo in Rome (he felt bad for the animal), and robbed the Venice Casino, all of which made him a local legend.”
— Mai
The Thinker… becomes the Do-er.
Figma puts out the first in their Table Museum series (you can figure it from the title: it’s little hyper-articulated action figure versions of great works of art), sending me, joyful, into appropriately deep thought. Pop Art: Final Form. What does it MEAN? There are all sorts of angles to consider; would Rodin have been a Fine Art sculptor or a corporate miniatures man if he’d lived today? Why don’t we value the artistry of toy sculptors like we do of other practicers? What’s the actual quantifiable difference between their professions? What’s the differing value between gazing upon the actual Thinker, which most of us will never do, and having this little guy on your desk? Is this the first Figma with a dick, and will it be the last?
But most importantly of all,
Eddy:This is a, sort of corpse in an open,oaken,oblong coffin… It's a dead body, Pats. Patsy:Yeah, but is it art? pic.twitter.com/djQLI3rPEe
— AbFabQuotes (@AbFabQuotes) April 30, 2014
— Claire
