Curators Quotes

Painters paint, and history continues to make fools of curators. ~ Robert Genn

People may be due the benefits of a democratic electoral process. But in the United States, content curators appropriately have a First Amendment right to present their content as they see fit. ~ Jonathan Zittrain

Argumentative exhibitions bring issues to life in a way that very much irritates traditional curators who want to see their pictures valued for themselves. ~ Jonathan Miller

So, you are not so much interested in exploring your feelings about Joy's betrayal. Or the failure of your relationship. You are merely giving me a tour of the museum.'
'The museum? ... I don't follow you.'
'Your museum of pain. Your sanctuary of justifiable indignation.'
'I, uh ... '
'We all superintend such a place, I suppose,' she said, 'although some of us are more painstaking curators than others. That is the category in which I would certainly put you, Dominick. You are a meticulous steward of the pain and injustices people have visited upon you. ~ Wally Lamb

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

What happened to us? It was a question that interested her. Most people seemed to believe that they were experts of their own life story. They had a set of memories that they strung like beads, and this necklace told a sensible tale. But she suspected that most of these stories would fall apart under strict examination--that, in fact, we were only peeping through a keyhole of our lives, and the majority of the truth, the reality of what happened to us, was hidden. Memories were no more solid than dreams...What happened to us? She drew smoke, considering the question. Was it possible that we would never really know? What if we were not, actually, the curators of our own lives? ~ Dan Chaon

Curators are great, but they're inherently biased. Curators are always making an editorial decision. Those biases have really big implications. ~ Ethan Zuckerman

If we imagine that the only right that we have is to make commodifiable objects, then we limit our practice, and we limit the great potential for an understanding between collectors, curators and galleries. ~ Theaster Gates

Perhaps we underestimated your mother," he said. "I can't imagine she would have made it so easy for anyone to find."

"A World War isn't enough of a hurdle?" Etta asked, rubbing her hand over her face. "Okay, okay…we just have to think this through.…"

"I do have an idea, but I'm afraid it's terrible," Nicholas said, surveying the lock on the gate and giving it another hard tug.

"A bad idea is better than no idea," Etta said.

"I'm glad you feel that way, because this is an exquisitely bad one." He turned toward her. "We can go around the back of the museum and I can lift you over the gate. You can then slip into the museum and hold any guards or curators inside hostage, until they give up the information about the location of the statues."

"Hold them hostage?" she repeated.

"Don't you know? That's how real pirates like Blackbeard made most of their money. He ransomed whole cities," he said. "I'll even teach you how to use the revolver."

Despite herself, Etta smiled. "I really appreciate the faith you have in my criminal abilities. But even if I find someone in there, I doubt they'll be good for anything other than calling the police to pick me up. It seems like the kind of information people would do anything to protect ~ Alexandra Bracken

The Arab who built himself a hut with marbles from the temple of Palmyra is more philosophical than all the curators of the museums of London, Paris, and Munich. ~ Anatole France

Although the art world is frequently characterised as a classless scene where artists from lower-msddle-class backgrounds drink champagne with high-priced hedge-fund managers, scholarly curators, fashion designers and other "creatives," you'd be mistaken if you thought the world was egalitarian or democratic. Art is about experimenting with ideas, but it is also about excellence and exclusion. In a society where everyone is looking for a little distinction, it's an intoxicating combination. ~ Sarah Thornton

The fact that in the last 10 years only five of the 40 Turner Prize nominees have been painters tells you more about curators than about the state of painting today. ~ Charles Saatchi

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

When you see something special, something inspired, you realise the debt we owe great curators and their unforgettable shows - literally unforgettable because you remember every picture, every wall and every juxtaposition. ~ Charles Saatchi

Every movement that slays its gods creates new ones, of course. I loathe talk of the sixties and seventies being a 'Greatest Generation' of artists, but if we're going to use such idiotic appellations, let this one also be applied to the artists, curators, and gallerists who emerged in the first half of the nineties. ~ Jerry Saltz

When critics or art historians or curators ask me why I still paint, the answer is that I am not naive. ~ Luc Tuymans

While the space for artists and curators has increased enormously, maybe, just maybe, that's left room for too many people calling themselves artists and curators who are simply not up to the term. ~ Jerry Saltz

I'd call my work 'instinctual design.' I like to find the spirit of a piece that defies time, age, and occasion. My clothes give the wearer the chance to develop their own voice within a wardrobe, and I think of them as curators of their personal style. ~ Chris Benz

I spent more than ten years working on the Neues Museum. It was a wonderful experience, an example of real collaboration between architects, conservationists, curators, client, politicians, the media, and the public. Discussions, even when difficult, were always about ideas. Ideas matter to Germans. They're a reflective people. That's attractive. ~ David Chipperfield

Contemporary curators orbit in the place of distribution and consumption, and less and less in the space of artists. I think it has become a lazy profession in regard to its relationship to the artists and the vigorous state of art making. ~ Michelle Grabner

As we become curators of our own contentment on the Simple Abundance path ... we learn to savor the small with a grateful heart. ~ Sarah Ban Breathnach

Scenius." Under this model, great ideas are often birthed by a group of creative individuals - artists, curators, thinkers, theorists, and other tastemakers - who make up an "ecology of talent. ~ Austin Kleon

Too many younger artists, critics, and curators are fetishizing the sixties, transforming the period into a deformed cult, a fantasy religion, a hip brand, and a crippling disease. ~ Jerry Saltz

To sweeten the hours we share scandals from the city, how curators removed an elephant's heart from the museum because it began beating when anyone in love looked at it, how the coroner found minnows swimming in a drowned girl's lungs. ~ Traci Brimhall

As I made my way through 'On Line,' the austere, stridently dogmatic, sometimes revelatory exhibition 'about line' at MoMA, I found myself thinking, 'Someone please wake me when the seventies are over!' In the empire of curators, the sun never sets on the seventies. It is the undead decade. ~ Jerry Saltz

Authors are curators of experience ~ Peter Mendelsund

I knew, as every peasant does, that land can never be truly owned. We are the keepers of the soil, the curators of trees. ~ Lisa St. Aubin De Teran

14th- and 15th-century drawings are almost unheard-of - and as a result, they generate jealous desire among dealers and curators. Museums in particular value rarity and pedigree more than attractiveness. ~ Peter Landesman

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

Artists, curators, collectors: we're all part of a regime. ~ David Balzer

Understanding otaku-hood, I think, is one of the keys to understanding the culture of the Web. There is something profoundly postnational about it, extra-geographic. We are all curators, in the postmodern world, whether we want to be or not. ~ William Gibson

The very paradigm of revolution, of right versus wrong, good versus bad, is a relic with no bearing on the present. Yet artists, exhibitions, and curators valorize the sixties. People who wrote about these artists 30 years ago still write about them in the same ways, often for the same magazines. ~ Jerry Saltz

Extract and expel implicit biases from your work life. Don't taint our visitors with your bias and views. Allow them to form their own conclusions where it's developmentally appropriate. ~ Monica O Montgomery

I do believe most curators - maybe I'm only speaking for myself here - want to be artists on some level. Curators must have an innate interest in what an artist makes. And they certainly have their opinions and criticisms, and the always ask, How would I have made this, or how would another artist make this? ~ Marion Boulton Stroud

The leader ... is rarely the brightest person in the group. Rather they have extraordinary taste, which makes them more curators than creators. They are appreciators of talent and nurturers of talent and they have the ability to recognize valuable ideas. ~ Warren G. Bennis

The most frequently cited artists and curators travel extensively and there is a real difference in saying whether concepts and other contributions to the current contemporary arts agenda bear a recognizable cultural, or even national, identity. ~ Charlotte Bydler

If the Bible is correct, and the Earth is only 6,000 years old, that means there were no dinosaurs, and museum curators have been messing with us. Or the dinosaurs were here, and we never noticed them. Or a lot of people saw them but didn't want to say anything. ~ Ron Shock

In the spirit of being a reflective practitioner of ourselves we must notice your own behavior as an educator and realize how it influences other. Recognize your privileges: race, gender, ability, career, citizenship, language is all privilege. Imagine how you feel in the visitors shoes and adjust to best help them process and contextualize. ~ Monica O Montgomery

In an era when museum curators were busy introducing the public to photographs of daily life taken by Robert Frank, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Diane Arbus, why did they simultaneously disdain paintings depicting the same kind of people? ~ Burton Silverman

Although the art world reveres the unconventional, it is rife with conformity. Artists make work that "looks like art" and behave in ways that enhance stereotypes. Curators pander to the expectations of their peers and their museum boards. Collectors run in herds to buy work by a handful of fashionable painters. Critics stick their finger in the air to see which way the wind is blowing so as to "get it right". Originality is not always rewarded, but some people take real risks and innovate, which gives a raison d'être to the rest. ~ Sarah Thornton

We are not only a civilization of amateur photographers; we are amateur curators, editors, and publishers. ~ Charlotte Cotton

Not only were the minds of artists formed by the university; in the same mold were formed those of the art historians, the critics, the curators, and the collectors by whom their work was evaluated. With the rise of Conceptual art, the classroom announced its final triumph over the studio. ~ Harold Rosenberg

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

I learned more from my mother than from all the art historians and curators who have informed me about technical aspects of art history and art appreciation over the years. ~ David Rockefeller