Influence #2: The Curator

The word “curator” comes from the Latin “cura,” meaning care. The original curators cared for public resources in ancient Rome: grain and oil supplies, aqueducts, public account books, and roads all had their own curators. In fourteenth-century England, the term came to refer to Christian clerics whose primary responsibility was the spiritual cure or care of their parishioners. In the 1660s, we finally begin to see the word begin to refer to “the officer in charge of a museum, gallery of art, library, or the like; a keeper, custodian” (http://bkaprt.com/cs/4/).⁵

In a consideration of this evolution, art-world critic David Levi Strauss writes that curators “have always been a curious mixture of bureaucrat and priest” (http://bkaprt.com/cs/5/),⁶ balancing practical administration with the care of the soul. And as content strategist Dan Zambonini has written, these museum and gallery curators care for—rather than merely about—their collections (http://bkaprt.com/cs/6/).⁷