Curator Quotes & Sayings

Gradually as you become curator of your own contentment, you will learn to embrace the gentle yearnings of your heart. — Sarah Ban Breathnach

I've been in some biennales, and some I haven't. I always like the idea of how you meet the curator, hang out, and figure out who you want to work with. — Kalup Linzy

The medium of comics is not necessarily about "good drawing"--"It's just an accident when it makes a nice drawing," Spiegelman explained to a curator at the MoMA--but rather about what Spiegelman calls picture-writing and Satrapies calls narrative drawing: how one person constructs a narrative that moves forward in time through both words and images. — Hillary Chute

I don't decide where I live. My wife decides. She's a curator of contemporary art, and she works at an art museum, so we go wherever she has a job. All basements look the same, so I can write from whatever basement I happen to be living in. — John Green

partner ACC Colin Carswell based at police HQ Sir David Strathern chief constable of Lothian and Borders Police Jean Burchill Rebus's current partner, museum curator — Ian Rankin

A record is a concert without halls and a museum whose curator is the owner. — Glenn Gould

It's not curators, it's not critics, it's not the public, it's not collectors who find great artists - it's other artists. — David Galenson

It's quite an obscure notion for a kid, no? To want to be a curator. But even then, I knew that I would do this. — Hans Ulrich Obrist

But the curator said nothing mattered so long as it looked all right to the ignorant." [Lady Brace]
"Sort of government motto. I see." [Sir Henry Merrivale] — Carter Dickson

It came to me then that we're each something of a constant gardener of a million forgotten galaxies, a librarian of lost places and times, a curator of a museum of random details that really only matter to each of us. — Jonathan Riggs

I like thinking of the writer as a kind of curator; the collection as curiosity cabinet - in a non-demeaning, non-objectifying sense - but an array, a set of offerings. — Leslie Jamison

The real architecture happens within the works themselves, and that was done by the composer. That's where the real skill is. In putting together a program, you're more a curator, but that's important as well. And then the interpreting of it is where our big job is. — Joshua Bell

Hodgkin had just returned from his second visit to Paris, where he had learned to prepare and dissect cadaveric specimens. He was promptly recruited to collect specimens for Guy's new museum. The job's most inventive academic perk, perhaps, was his new title: the Curator of the Museum and the Inspector of the Dead. Hodgkin — Siddhartha Mukherjee

So what do you do, then?" she demanded after about a block. "I'm the curator of e-manuscripts for the British Library, just outside of Yorkshire." When she stopped abruptly again, he braced himself for what he knew what to come. No one believed him when he talked about his work, and certainly no one believed that he, of all people, was a librarian. Too young, too thin, too...male. — Alexis D. Craig

The staff played hot potato with my call until someone could locate the Person in Charge of Lying to the Press. The PCLP said that the room that houses the base archives is locked. And that only the curator would have a key. And that Holloman currently has no curator. Evidently the new curator's first task would be to find a way to open the archives. — Mary Roach

Retouching is our favourite artistic device. Each of us is a curator in his own museum. [..] Uncover A, cover up B. Remove all spots. Keep your mouth shut. Think of your tongue as a weapon. Think one thing and say another. Use orotund expressions to obfuscate your intentions. Hide what you believe. Believe what you hide. — Dubravka Ugresic

I couldn't help but remember the one at my parents' place after they had passed. I'd gone through their things and hadn't kept much, but when it came time for the auction I'd had a strong impulse to bid on everything like some museum curator attempting to keep the collection whole. — Craig Johnson

In the daylight, order ruled, fences stood, how-do-you-do's and polite nods were the recipe. But at night, darkness rendered everything still and hush and secret. Minnie was a curator of secrets. — Kiersten White

They bragged of what they would be doing if they hadn't gone into this wretched industry: they'd be a curator (possibly the one job where you'd make even less than you did now), a sommelier (well, make that two jobs), a gallery owner (make it three), a writer (all right, four - clearly, none of them were equipped to make money, ever, in any imagining). — Hanya Yanagihara

I like rap music. But bragging about being rich to poor people is really offensive. I want to hear a rap song about buying a Cy Twombly painting or dating a museum curator. I want to hear about that kind of rich. — John Waters

A curator is an information chemist. He or she mixes atoms together in a way to build an info-molecule. Then adds value to that molecule — Robert Scoble

Beware of using up your last forty years in being the curator of your first fifty. — Allan Gurganus

Be a curator of your life. Slowly cut things out until you're left only with what you love, with what's necessary, with what makes you happy. — Leo Babauta

My mum was a dancer when she was a kid. Then my parents met and eventually had an art gallery; my dad taught himself how to frame pictures, and then he was a curator at an art gallery in the city I'm from. I'm an only child. — Ari Millen

The old curator of ceramics lay near the door, looking indignant, as if death was a silly modern fad that he rather disapproved of. — Philip Reeve

Some nine years before, Mr. Tan Chay Yan, scion of a well-known Peranakan Chinese family of Malacca, had converted his pepper garden into a rubber plantation. In 1897 this had seemed like a mad thing to do. Everyone had advised against it: rubber was known to be a risk. Mr. Ridley, the curator of the Singapore Botanical Gardens, had been trying for years to interest British planters in giving rubber a try. The imperial authorities in London had spent a fortune in arranging to have seed stocks stolen from Brazil. — Amitav Ghosh

The Victim was a chronic fuck-up. People Like her always seemed to hang out with The Poisonous Cunt. In turn, she kept their self-esteem low and made sure that they stayed in psychic immiseration. She was a curator of dead souls. — Irvine Welsh

Afrofuturism is an intersection of imagination, technology, the future, and liberation. "I generally define Afrofuturism as a way of imagining possible futures through a black cultural lens," says Ingrid LaFleur, an art curator and Afrofuturist. — Ytasha L. Womack

I play a curator, the most American part you can think of. My work is to protect the Declaration of Independence. I work at the National Archives in Washington. — Diane Kruger

I've often been given the career advice to not wear too many hats, which, of course, has just encouraged me to wear other hats, such as being a writer, being a curator, or just doing anything outside of the definition of an artist. — Matthew Brannon

WHEN WE ARE OPEN AND GIVING OF OUR LIGHT, WE CREATE AN ENDLESS REFLECTION THAT OUTLIVES OUR HUMAN EXISTENCE. — Gary L. Friedman

I'm happy to be content-maker as well as curator, so I'm happy to also be a presenter for amazing things. — Jason Silva

But with Celine, she managed to amass a collection of a thousand pieces, each one hand-selected for its historical value and beauty, and then turn her apartment into a masterpiece that you could sit back and enjoy. She wasn't just a collector, she was a curator. — K.A. Tucker

A curator treasures aged bibles, but the wise treasure the wisdom within. — Christian Hunt

Good design is a renaissance attitude that combines technology, cognitive science, human need, and beauty to produce something that the world didn't know it was missing. - PAOLA ANTONELLI, curator of architecture and design, Museum of Modern Art — Daniel H. Pink

One curator said he didn't want my work in his gallery because it was so simple even children understood it. I thought, what a wonderful tribute! — Ted Harrison

The way something looks or sounds is also what it means. Words as visual and aural phenomena, which mainly poets, not critics and prose writers, tend to be obsessed with. I think maybe I'm more of a curator than I am a writer in the strict sense because I am interested in how everything on the page, in a space, works together. — Masha Tupitsyn

It was too late to change anything. Too late to make different choices. To be a better mother than she had been. Kate could only be the mother that she was, Amelia's mother - the curator of her memory, the keeper of her secrets, the cherisher of her heart. That, she would always be. — Kimberly McCreight

No dealer, curator, buyer or critic, or any existing combination of these, can be depended on to produce a reputation that is more than a momentary flurry. — Harold Rosenberg

The long-dead curator from the Bronx Zoo now had me in his unwavering grip. Close by, the bushmaster too lay in wait. — Dan Eatherley

I don't like the word 'poetry,' and I don't like poetry readings, and I usually don't like poets. I would much prefer describing myself and what I do as: I'm kind of a curator, and I'm kind of a night-owl reporter. — Tom Waits

Online, everyone - the artist and the curator, the master and the apprentice, the expert and the amateur - has the ability to contribute something. — Austin Kleon

I relied mainly on other artists, who I think are smarter than critics, any critics or curators or anybody like that. They really know. — Robert Barry

Over the years I have written creative non-fiction related to the curricula I produced, first as an elementary school art instructor, then for nearly two decades as a museum education curator. While any curriculum I wrote was based on facts as well as best and accepted practices, to add imaginative interest and encourage my students' engagement I put those facts in the context of stories, invented situations that brought to life the remote or unfamiliar — Susan Bass Marcus

She was the curator of her marriage, collector of swift quotes and unremarked-upon sensations. — Laura Furman

They would also need to talk sense to her. The almost-existing children, the husky-voiced daughter, a museum curator perhaps, and the gifted, less settled son, good at too many things, who failed to complete his university course, but a far better pianist than she. Both always affectionate, brilliant at Christmases and summer-holiday castles and entertaining their youngest relations. — Ian McEwan

When Design become Useless it becomes Art. Yesterday's Artisans are today's Artists. — Vineet Raj Kapoor

The day I decided I didn't want to be a 19th-Century European curator, I knew I would never have the experience of people coming and going 'ooh' and 'aah,' the way they do around the Monets. It just doesn't happen. — Thelma Golden

The real problem with the art world is not the money men scavenging in its wake - they've always been there - but the pirates who've taken over the ship. I am thinking, of course, of that awful art world species: the curator. — Waldemar Januszczak

If I waved that in front of a museum curator, he'd promptly lose control of his salivary glands. — Kevin Hearne

I see you are still unnerved by my presence," the Curator noted. He was still smiling. "My apologies. — S.G. Night

I don't often go to curator or artist walk-throughs of exhibitions. For a critic, it feels like cheating. I want to see shows with my own eyes, making my own mistakes, viewing exhibitions the way most of their audience sees them. — Jerry Saltz

Mammy was now the curator of their lives' museum and she, Laila, a mere visitor. — Khaled Hosseini

The 21st-century curator works in a supremely globalised reality. — Hans Ulrich Obrist

I was at the Smithsonian for twenty years, and I'm still at the Smithsonian as a curator emeritus, and I still plan to figure out what that means for me at this point in my life. — Bernice Johnson Reagon

I don't really understand why people are so interested in me, personally. I'm just a curator. I'm just telling people things I think are cool. — Elise Andrew

Before hoarding became a phenomenon, people just called it "collecting" or "being nostalgic." I don't hoard, exactly, but I get it. It's a response to our need and desire for purpose, order, definition, and a fortress. It's a calling that requires constant management, control, and obsessive attention. I am amassing artifacts from the history of me. My garage is the storeroom and temporary exhibition hall of the yet-to-be-built museum documenting the rise and fall of the Marc Age. I am the curator. I decide the meaning and worth of the collection based on my feelings in a moment. — Marc Maron

When money and hype recede from the art world, one thing I won't miss will be what curator Francesco Bonami calls the 'Eventocracy.' All this flashy 'art-fair art' and those highly produced space-eating spectacles and installations wow you for a minute until you move on to the next adrenaline event. — Jerry Saltz

Wright is an interesting study of a superstar architect having both right and wrong influence. "All Architecture, worthy the name," he decreed in 1910, "will, henceforward, more and more be organic."12 So inspired by Viollet-le-Duc and Louis Sullivan, he inspired countless others (including young me) toward an organic approach to architecture. At the same time, the very pomposity of his decrees helped inflame a fatal egotism in generations of architects, and his most famous buildings belie his organic ideal. They were so totally designed - down to the screwheads all being aligned horizontally to match his prairie line - that they cannot be changed. To live in one of his houses is to be the curator of a Frank Lloyd Wright museum; — Stewart Brand

I'm sure I would have been considered a more significant artist if I was a singer-songwriter. It's just not the way I roll. I love being a curator and a musicologist. People write me letters and thank me for turning them on to Fred McDowell and Sippie Wallace, and that's partly my job this time around. — Bonnie Raitt

I AM the current curator of the black trunk and the stories it holds within. — Hope Barrett

Cultural confinement takes place when a curator imposes his own limits on an art exhibition, rather than asking an artist to set his limits. — Robert Smithson

My high school guidance counselor, Mrs. Inverholl, once had me take an aptitude test to figure out my future. The number one job recommendation for my set of skills was an air traffic accident investigator, of which there are fewer than fifty in the world. The number two job was a museum curator for Chinese-American studies. The number three job was a circus clown. — Jodi Picoult

A tall, thin, middle-aged man with a long, gray Jovian beard stood outside the Hermitage Museum with an expression of absolute shattered regret.
Tatiana instantly reacted to his face. What could make a man look this way? He was standing next to the back of a military truck, watching young men carry wooden crates down the ramp from the Winter Palace. It was these crates the man looked at with such profound heartbreak, as if they were his vanishing first love.
"Who is that man?" she asked, tremendously affected by his expression.
"The curator of the Hermitage."
"Why is he looking at the crates that way?"
Alexander said, "They are his life's sole passion. He doesn't know if he is ever going to see them again. — Paullina Simons

[A Buddhist monk on a pilgrimage speaks to a museum curator.]
And I come here alone. For five
seven
eighteen
forty years it was in my mind that the old Law was not well followed; being overlaid, as thou knowest, with devildom, charms, and idolatry ... '
So it comes with all faiths. — Rudyard Kipling

Remembering those days always aroused a mixture of emotions in her - something akin to, but not quite, nostalgia. Nostalgia was often romanticized; with these memories, there was no reason to make them any more romantic than they already were. Nor did she share these memories with others. They were hers, and over the years, she'd come to view them as a sort of museum exhibit, one in which she was both the curator and the only patron. — Nicholas Sparks

Laila lay there and listened, wishing Mammy would notice that she, Laila, hadn't become shaheed, that she was alive, here, in bed with her, that she had hopes and a future. But Laila knew that her future was no match for her brothers' past. They had overshadowed her in life. They would obliterate her in death. Mammy was now the curator of their lives' museum and she, Laila, a mere visitor. A receptacle for their myths. The parchment on which Mammy meant to ink their legends. — Khaled Hosseini

The privilege I've had as a curator is not just the discovery of new works ... but what I've discovered about myself and what I can offer in the space of an exhibition - to talk about beauty, to talk about power, to talk about ourselves, and to talk and speak to each other. — Thelma Golden

I don't believe in the creativity of the curator. I don't think that the exhibition-maker has brilliant ideas around which the works of artists must fit. Instead, the process always starts with a conversation, in which I ask the artists what their unrealized projects are, and then the task is to find the means to realize them.
pg 10 — Hans Ulrich Obrist

In the years that I worked in museums, first as a summer student and eventually as a curator, one of the primary lessons I learned was this: History is shaped by the people who seek to preserve it. We, of the present, decide what to keep, what to put on display, what to put into storage, and what to discard. — Susanna Kearsley

I never ever approached a dealer. I have always been approached by dealers or curators or whatever. — Robert Barry

Katherine stopped abruptly and looked at Langdon. "Robert, Melencolia I is here in Washington. It hangs in the National Gallery."
"Yes," he said with a smile, "and something tells me that's not a coincidence. The gallery is closed at this hour, but I know the curator and - "
"Forget it, Robert, I know what happens when you go to museums." Katherine headed off into a nearby alcove, where she saw a desk with a computer.
Langdon followed, looking unhappy. — Dan Brown

My job is art curator, not artist. All I have ever wanted to do is immerse myself in art, to enjoy it, to learn about it, to write about it, to talk to others about it. — Hans Ulrich Obrist

Curator Shantrelle P. Lewis left for Amsterdam an Andy Warhol fellow, and came back with a film in her pocket. Please support this confrontation of the Netherlands' violently passive aggressive racist traditions, by an American Southern, aggressive aggressive. She's a top notch thinker and lover of questions ... — Dream Hampton

No one really knew who (or what) the Curator actually was, nor could anyone guess as to where he came from or why he stood guard over this gate. He was like the rainclouds outside or the sun behind them: you didn't question where they came from or what they were doing, simply because they had always been there. Some of the more sociable Genshwin had tried several times to wring some interesting answers out of him, but no one had ever been able to get past his enigmatic grin.
It made Rachel uncomfortable. As a youth, she had often tried to provoke him to anger without success. He would just laugh and shake his head at her like a patient father ignoring a petulant child. He was too patient, and she resented that; he was intentionally cryptic and she hated him for it. And the Curator knew it, too. — S.G. Night

No! he wanted to cry out. No, Tania, please come back. What can I leave her with, what can I say, what one word can I leave with her, for her? What one word for my wife?
"Tatiasha," Alexander called after her. God, what was the curator's name ... ?
She glanced back.
"Remember Orbeli- — Paullina Simons

Each of us is a museum that opens for business the moment we're born, with memory the sole curator. How could a staff of one possibly stay abreast of all those holdings? — Kate Bolick

I mix everything up. A museum curator once said to me that there is a great jazz component to the way I do things because good jazz is improvisation and draws elements from all different cultures. And that's the way I do everything - the way I dress and decorate. — Iris Apfel

An exhibition is in many ways a series of conversations. Between the artist and viewer, curator and viewer, and between the works of art themselves. It clicks when an exhibition feels like it has answered some questions, and raised even more. — Thelma Golden

Rachel scowled. "You've known Mrak longer than anyone alive. You know what I know - the things he's done, the things he hides from everyone else."
The Curator's smile did not wane as he shrugged. "Indeed I do. But judge-jury-executioner is not my calling. I'm just the gatekeeper. — S.G. Night

Although aesthetically nugatory, "Beat Culture and the New America" was an exhibition of considerable significance -- but not in quite the way that Lisa Phillips, its curator, intended, Casting a retrospective glance at the sordid world of Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, Lawrence, Ferlinghetti, and other Beat icons, the exhibition unwittingly furnished a kind of pathologist's report on one of the most toxic cultural movements in American history. — Roger Kimball

I see a curator as a catalyst, generator and motivator - a sparring partner, accompanying the artist while they build a show, and a bridge builder, creating a bridge to the public. — Hans Ulrich Obrist

You're the last line of defense. When you're dead, Hitler will march through Leningrad the way he marched through Paris. Do you remember that?'
'That's not fair. The French didn't fight,' Tatiana said, wanting to be anywhere right now but standing in front of men loading artwork from the Hermitage onto armored trucks.
'They didn't fight, Tania, but you will fight. For every street and for every building. And when you lose
'
'The art will be saved.'
'Yes! The art will be saved,' Alexander said emotionally. 'And another artist will paint a glorious picture, immortalizing you, with a club in your raised hand, swinging to hit the German tank as it's about to crush you, all against the backdrop of the statue of Peter the Great atop his bronze horse. And that picture will hang in the Hermitage, and at the start of the next war the curator will once again stand on the street, crying over his vanishing crates. — Paullina Simons

I also take pleasure in the so-called negative power in Grotjahn's work. That is, I love his paintings for what they are not. Unlike much art of the past decade, Grotjahn isn't simply working from a prescribed checklist of academically acceptable, curator-approved 'isms' and twists. — Jerry Saltz

Dear Judy: Your letter is here. I have read it twice, and with amazement. Do I understand that Jervis has given you, for a Christmas present, the making over of the John Grier Home into a model institution, and that you have chosen me to disburse the money? Me - I, Sallie McBride, the head of an orphan asylum! My poor people, have you lost your senses, or have you become addicted to the use of opium, and is the raving of two fevered imaginations? I am exactly as well fitted to take care of one hundred children as to become the curator of a zoo. — Jean Webster