MoMA R&D

Salon 1 A Curator's Tale

To kick-off the MoMA R&D Salon series, our inaugural salon, A Curator’s Tale, explored what it means to be a curator, both within a museum and outside museum walls in the commercial, educational, and social arenas. From algorithms that recognize and recommend music to museum visitors who participate in organizing crowd-sourced exhibitions, curatorial practice has reached a dynamic and controversial stage.

Watch the videos from the salon and explore some of these questions: Is the “curatorial turn” a passing metaphor—like the “edited” lives, libraries, and wardrobes of a few years ago—or does it mark a healthy and necessary development of life and culture, both online and in the physical world? Does online curation undermine the authority of museum curators, as some commentators have suggested? What do all these curators have in common? Does the increasingly prevalent use of the verb “to curate” indicate a more active, and perhaps more democratic involvement with culture and diverse individuals, or is it just another way for the capitalist machine to consume, market, and brand?

The salon took place on October 15th, 2012.

Speakers

Reading Resources