Curating Quotes

I always say that I'm an artist who works with pictures and words, so I think that the different aspects of my activity, whether it's writing criticism, or doing visual work that incorporates writing, or teaching, or curating, is all of a single cloth, and I don't make any separation in terms of those practices. ~ Barbara Kruger

I was standing amid floor-to-ceiling shelves of books in wonder and awe when my view of stories suddenly and forever changed. There were enormous piles of books lying in corners. Books covered the walls. Books even lined the staircases as you went up from one floor to the next. It was as if this used bookstore was not just a place for selling used books; it was like the infrastructure itself was made up of books. There were books to hold more books, stories built out of stories.

I was standing in Daedalus Books in Charlottesville, Virginia, and I had recently read Mortimer J. Adler's How to Read a Book. I was alive with the desire to read. But at that particular moment, my glee turned to horror. For whatever reason, the truth of the numbers suddenly hit me. The year before, I had read about thirty books. For me, that was a new record. But then I started counting. I was in my early twenties, and with any luck I'd live at least fifty more years. At that rate, I'd have about 1,500 books in me, give or take.

There were more books than that on the single wall I was staring at.

That's when I had a realization of my mortality. My desire outpaced reality. I simply didn't have the life to read what I wanted to read.

Suddenly my choices in that bookstore became a profound act of deciding. The Latin root of the word decide - cise or cide - is to "cut off' or "kill." The idea is that to choose anything means to kill off other options you m ~ Justin Whitmel Earley

For me, the idea of curating can be expanded. Curating science, curating art, music and theater and performance and not only bring those things into art but bring art into those areas. ~ Hans Ulrich Obrist

The methods I present here are all based on three key objectives: (1) capturing all the things that might need to get done or have usefulness for you - now, later, someday, big, little, or in between - in a logical and trusted system outside your head and off your mind; (2) directing yourself to make front-end decisions about all of the "inputs" you let into your life so that you will always have a workable inventory of "next actions" that you can implement or renegotiate in the moment; and (3) curating and coordinating all of that content, utilizing the recognition of the multiple levels of commitments with yourself and others you will have at play, at any point in time. This ~ David Allen

With Street View, you're curating a data set capable of incredible emotional resonance for the person interacting with it because everyone grew up somewhere. And if your house is in this dataset, that's going to provide some emotional context for you. ~ Chris Milk

You may think that what happens in Hollywood doesn't affect you. You're wrong. My darlings, who do you think is curating your reality? Who is showing you who and what you want to be? ~ Rose McGowan

By the time a student gets to college, he's spent a decade curating a bewilderingly diverse resume to prepare for a completely unknowable future. Come what may, he's ready--for nothing in particular. ~ Peter Thiel

You can't have people curating culture in this way when we need to see things in order to reform from them. ~ David Oyelowo

Sometimes you do have people who are great at curating; sometimes you have people curating who don't know what they're do ... ~ Sheila Heti

I'm interested in pitches that have compelling people and ideas at the core - and a good news peg certainly doesn't hurt. We look for stories that are solutions-oriented, but not irrationally upbeat, from writers with a strong voice. For LadyJournos, where I'm curating not editing. ~ Ann Friedman

I love curating, because I'm lucky and privileged that I have a platform and I can share my discoveries with other people. ~ Martin Parr

I have always believed that it is the artist who creates a work, but a society that turns it into a work of art. - Johannes Cladders ~ Hans Ulrich Obrist

Making art is not the matter of a moment, and nor is making an exhibition; curating follows art. ~ Hans Ulrich Obrist

I think my weakness as a writer is a limited imagination, and I think my strength is a talent for reflecting the world, or sort of curating things out of the world and putting them into books. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

But there is another case for curating as a vanguard activity for the twenty-first century. As the artist Tino Sehgal has pointed out, modern societies find themselves today in an unprecedented situation: The problem of lack, or scarcity, which has been the primary factor motivating scientific and technological innovation, is now joined and even superseded by the problem of the global effects of overproduction and resource use. Thus, moving beyond the object as the locus of meaning has a further relevance. Selection, presentation, and conversation are ways for human beings to create and exchange real value, without dependence on older, unsustainable processes. Curating can take the lead in pointing us toward this crucial importance of choosing. ~ John Brockman

I'm trying to expand the notion of curating. Exhibitions need not only take place in galleries, need not only involve displaying objects. Art can appear where we expect it least. ~ Hans Ulrich Obrist

The whole experience co-curating the Biennial was a learning experience. The Suburban and The Poor Farm are not institutions. They are not by design, organized around power structures. Because I am someone who thrives on delineating context, seeing up close the inner workings of the museum was not wasted on me. ~ Michelle Grabner

As a business, the funeral industry has developed by selling a certain type of "dignity." Dignity is having a well-orchestrated final moment for the family, complete with a well-orchestrated corpse. Funeral directors become like directors for the stage, curating the evening's performance. The corpse is the star of the show and pains are taken to make sure the fourth wall is never broken, that the corpse does not interact with the audience and spoil the illusion. ~ Caitlin Doughty