Finally, Chapter 7 summarizes the book emphasizing how the curatorial imperative confronts users with questions of who to be, how to appear, and what to consume. This questioning shapes an anthropological horizon, a homo curatorius, whose “story that you should be telling on your own” supervises desirable prospects of class, status, and belonging.
Notes
1 This is according to Books Ngram Viewer: https://books.google.com/ngr ams/graph?content=curating&year\_start=1800&year\_end=2019&corpus= 26&smoothing=0
2 See: www.discogs.com/fr/master/922324-Various-All-Tomorrows-Parties-31- Curated-By-Matt-Groening
3 David Balzer similarly spoke of this “curatorial impulse” as becoming a “dominant way of thinking and being” in modern societies since the 1990s (2014: 2–3). The term “impulse” implies an instinctive action or reaction that is almost uncontrollable. Similarly, the impulse to “curate and be curated” is ingrained in contemporary social worlds to the point that it is invisibilized.
4 The 2019 post by the women’s magazine Elle, arguing that the “Curator Boyfriend” was the hottest accessory of the year, is indicative of the popular understanding of curators and their lifeworlds:
The Curator is endowed with qualities that include, but are not limited to: the business savvy to navigate the high-stakes art market, enough sensitivity to appreciate the latest Marina Abromovic performance piece, and the occasional invite to party on a boat with Stavros Niarchos. They’re well-read, worldly and engaged in shaping critical dialogues of our times. The kind of guy you can discuss post-humanism with over pizza, who comments on the decor while ordering you a cab but letting you split the bill. We’re about to enter a new decade, and being self-aware and socially conscious has never been more attractive. Someone who can point to a favorite Louise Bourgeois sculpture or be brought to tears looking at an El Anatsui assemblage is not only in touch with his emotions but also cares about wider social, geopolitical and cultural issues. A Curator may still ghost you, but it’s probably because he’s doing something legitimately interesting with his time, like scouting in the foothills of the Himalayas.
(ELLE, 2019)
5 The theorist David Levi-Strauss argues that the curators “have always been a curious mixture of bureaucrat and priest” (2012), they crisscross modalities between the extremes of bureaucracy and spirituality, rationality and emotion, administration and care.
Introducing the Curatorial Imperative
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6 These political powers depend on the distinct places concepts occupy in wider social imagination, especially at the specific time and space when their evocation