Great post here (by someone who used to be a real curator):
“real curators don’t just leave a record. They assiduously build their collections, so that each new entry is made in full knowledge of its predecessors and with a deeply thoughtful anticipation for what comes next. These collections vibrate like a spider’s web with each new entry.
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. But that’s not what I see the new “curators” doing. This richer, more authentic, more sincere rendering of the term could accomplish something astonishing. It would help sort and capture contemporary culture with some feeling for context, relative location, relative weight, what goes with what. This is the sort of thing that Pepys accomplished, unwittingly, with his diary. This notion of the curator has yet to find its champion. I don’t think we quite yet have a Pepys of the present day.”
Made me think of The Culture of Collecting again, and the problem with collecting things that aren’t “objects” as such: how do you easily spot what’s missing from your collection of thoughts? In other words, how can you usefully use all these wonderful online tools to avoid thinking kitsch thoughts or blandly repeating yourself?