“We aren't constantly swimming in trauma. We're a joyful people. I want to make sure that the way we present the work is reflective of an expansive and nuanced understanding that we can hold pain but we can also hold a lot of love, joy and happiness.” — Kalyn Fay Barnoski, Philbrook Museum of Art When you’re a gatekeeper to a world that’s still unf…

“I'm really interested in curators who have done the work of healing through their deep curiosity and then are thinking about what they can curate to help others on their journey. I can't think of anything that's more worthwhile and more meaningful than extending that vulnerability of your own healing journey and trying to support others on theirs.…

“I just love creating these really hyper specific titles where, after reading these few words, you really have an understanding of the context of the playlist itself…It's crazy how being that specific makes people so compelled to actually listen because it feels relatable.” — Kasey Gelsomino, Kasey’s Playlist You don’t have to press play to know wh…

“[Mixtapes were] the ultimate love letter because it’s like saying: ‘This is me looking at you and trying to understand where your taste lies and also imparting some of my taste. This is where we intersect.’ Maybe I can introduce you to new things while recognizing that I'm here in a context that I think you will appreciate.” — Hrishikesh Hirway, m…

“It's not like you press a button and you get to see art. You have to go there to know there…You have to be in front of it, obviously, and then you have to have a relationship with it. You have to see it again and again. And sometimes it takes years.” — Dereck Mangus, Baltimore Museum of Art In 2022, the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) turned over th…

“The internet demands that everyone be a kind of curator: you're a curator of your own Instagram, of your opinions on Twitter, of what playlists you listen to on Spotify. There's a lot of curation going on but it's more in the sense of selecting between stuff. Curation, to me, is a much more deep-seated act that has more to do with the caretaking o…

“Good writing is simple writing. I think that goes for the curation part, as well. I will try and strip myself from the equation as much as possible. You’re like a spider with your tentacles out everywhere, looking and pulling in things from different reader recommendations, dashboards and things you know about the company, and trying to spin it in…

“Back in the day, curation was mostly a job in museums and art galleries. It took the Spotifys, Twitters and Netflixes of the world to really popularize curation as a valid business need. I’m proud to say that we were amongst the first ones to identify the business need for that discipline.” — Robyn Kerkhof, Blinkist Curation has long moved out of …

“The problem is more to find what one wants to curate because, well, you have to find your way…[Mastodon] is a great place because you have incredible choice and a rich and creative crowd out there.” — Sabine Stoye, Mastodon art and photography curator You may have heard about a Twitter alternative called Mastodon. The service is a decentralized so…

“In the history of human culture, we've never had a time that’s been better for learning about photography. There are images everywhere, and hopefully somebody like me can help you see some of the good stuff.” — Andy Adams, FlakPhoto Projects In an era flooded with so much photography, usually without context, it’s a relief to have Andy Adams as a …

“If you're a curator in a museum, you're thinking about the thousands or millions of people that are coming through your space, not just your own personal taste. That's [also] important when doing a list. I have things that I love that I drink, but if I'm putting a list together, it's really important to think about all the people that are coming t…

“‘Disability aesthetics’ is this term that is really loose but points to where we can find disability as the space that informs an artistic practice. When I say ‘disability arts’ or ‘disabled artistry,’ it’s [referring to] artists who have an experience of disability or illness and use that as a space that is generative and that is not hidden from …

“When you focus on the research, educating, explaining and pulling things together, and then communicating that back in an easy way, this idea of bias often does not come up. I know that sounds counterintuitive. But it’s really about placing focus on how we explain [the news]. We don’t really worry about [what each side says]. We put our focus on c…

“A lot of the curation and knowledge management is happening in single-player tools. It'd be a lot more powerful to combine the richness and the utility of all these tools with a more networked discovery and communal approach to building knowledge.” — Sari Azout When we talk about curation, the first question that usually pops to mind is: What is t…

“Unlike the traditional definition of collecting, where you just accumulate, sneaker collecting is to accumulate and wear. The finality of collecting the art is to style it, to make it yours. For me, it's not just about the sneaker. It's about the whole fashion and the whole fit. It's about the whole piece that I'm putting out there while highlight…

“There's no such thing as an unbiased algorithm, and some companies have probably admitted that sooner than others. But once you do admit it, the only rational step you can take is to try to learn as much as you can about the ways that algorithms can reflect our biases, both positive and negative, and what we can do to tune them so that they are ru…

“Curation is a specific mode of creativity that's more based in analogical thinking and juxtaposition and categorization. The best curators are critics too … It's not enough to be a great subject matter expert. You also have to have a deep understanding of the spheres of art, aesthetics, commerce and technology, and be someone who's constantly thin…

“For several years now, I have just kind of felt like I'm not seeing what I really want to see in my feed, despite following friends and strangers whose taste and opinions I care about…The algorithm doesn't really get it. The big motivation for me is: humans just do stuff better. Some things just can't be automated.” — Ann Friedman The algorithm do…

“The beauty of NFTs and Web 3 is that now it's global, where you have a whole gallery in your phone or laptop. You can be your own curator without having all the background and connections that are typically in the traditional art space…Anyone can curate if they have that passion and that love for creativity and art.” — Lex Marcano, NFT Girl With a…

“When you host a lightweight cocktail party, you now have a way to go through life, collecting these new and interesting people and bringing them into your world…You use these parties as an audition to see who you would like to become better friends with.” — Nick Gray, creator of “The 2-Hour Cocktail Party” Whether you’re new to a place or getting …

Technology is an amazing tool, but at the end of the day there is still no algorithm for cool. Cool is humans observing, selecting and sharing something because it moves them and they think it might move others, too. Join us on a weekly journey to understand tastemaking as a craft that can be learned, honed and expressed through the art of curation…

“Whenever I wonder, ‘Wow, can I really pull this off?’ I know I'm in a good space, because I really want to push the limits of what I can do, what the exhibition can do and what the institution can do while trying to propel things in a positive direction. Risk, experimentality and curiosity are essential criteria for curators.” — Apsara DiQuinzio T…

“Part of my work is to look at how artists are using their craft to speak to the times that we're living in — everything from climate change to immigration to the everyday human experience. My role is to look at what our museum has historically focused on and, in some regards, attempt to fill in the gaps or expand the conversation.” — Ozi Uduma, Un…

“I am the kind of person that believes in frequency and energy. I really like to meditate. So when I think about how to inspire the people…I use music as the channel to share that energy.” — Ramon Olguin Sanchez A vibe manager — also known as a vibe curator — has been called “the most millennial job ever.” To be one, you’ve got to be the kind of pe…

“Film curators definitely have the challenge of [their medium’s] temporal nature. With two dimensional objects, you can easily look at them at once and figure out [how to] arrange them. But when it comes to working with a time-based medium, you really have to watch it…and maybe multiple times to understand how the piece works.” — Leslie Raymond, An…

“To be a good curator, it's important to…be open to what you don't know and to be looking for people to tell you what the new important ideas are instead of going out and saying, I think I know what matters.” — Corey Hajim, TED Business Curator She didn’t know it while it was unfolding, but when you look back at Corey Hajim’s career trajectory, it …

“Ever since I was at Amazon, I've been intrigued by the way in which discovery needs to be a bit more than search, and how curation is almost the flipside of knowing what you want…Helping you identify what you would get delight from is very often the result of curation.” — Spencer Hyman As a “craft chocolate DJ” who runs a subscription service call…

“I’ve learned how to choose the people who have the most interesting voices and stories and not just the ones that make $500,000 a year…I've really learned to mine for story and interesting tidbits and different kinds of people.” — Hannah Rimm If you’ve ever read a Money Diary on Refinery29, you know they’re fascinating and a little bit addictive. …

“Sometimes in the Jewish imagination, but definitely in the broader public imagination, people reduce all of Jewish history to the Holocaust. And so I think one of the responsibilities that curators have is to show the rich panoply of Jewish experience beyond just 1939-1945…and to create access points to those histories.” — Jason Steinhauer History…

“The moment we opened our doors, the project belonged to everybody else who's interacting with it. It’s [now] about serving those people and their engagement with things. A lot of curation is also about listening and continuing to change your perspective and accept things that you didn't know or understand before you started on the journey you're o…

“The best preachers are able to say, here's this timeless principle — like humility or forgiveness or racial reconciliation — and then look around and say, ‘In what areas are our people uniquely challenged to live by this principle?’ That's where the curation comes in, where you're reading the news and trying to find the pressure points where peopl…

“What the internet really needed was a great curator; someone who would read and select and present the finest pieces to you so that you could ignore the noise and get straight to the quality.” — Uri Bram, The Browser Mission accomplished. If you subscribe to The Browser, you can rest easy knowing that a steady stream of fascinating pieces you didn…

“We really want to help people discover music that can help them feel a particular set of feelings in a way that we believe is incredibly potent. For me personally, that’s kind of my guiding light in how I decide on what music actually stands out and what music will be able to touch many people from within.” — Jonathan Tzou Jonathan Tzou lives at t…

“A top-down view is: someone's going to tell me what's cool, and that's not how it works anymore. It's trickle up, where the curator is the one who builds the audience and curates what's cool. If the audience comes, it comes from the community. And that's why it's really exciting: it doesn't rely on someone who has status or money to make these thi…

“We're not trying to pick something that fits our subscribers’ tastes and interests. In a way, we're sort of doing the opposite: the point of Stack is that you come to us because you want to be exposed to things that you wouldn't have come upon yourself.” — Steve Watson, Stack Steve Watson is the ultimate magazine curator. As the founder and curato…

“I want to democratize the idea of collecting so that it's not only for people who have a lot of money who collect ancient artifacts or shoes or expensive watches. You can collect ideas, artists, and favorite things…” — Julia Lu, The Collector If you spend any time on Flipboard, you’ll likely see The Collector’s Storyboards pass through your feeds.…

“It has to feel like it's a creation, not just a collection. That keeps you from getting burned out, because if you're passionate about what you're making, then you wake up the next morning and you just need to push that publish button.” — Dave Pell If you’re a news(letter) connoisseur, then you likely already know — and love — NextDraft. Every wee…

“I always get really excited when someone who has access to any possible new piece of clothing buys something from the past that we've chosen. That's a really exciting step forward for vintage. It's the most ethical way of shopping, and chances are no one else is going to have the same thing that you have.” — Brandon Veloria Giordano of James Velor…

“The Latin term 'cura' means ‘concern’ or ‘study’ or figuring out different approaches to pulling together things. It also relates to healing, which I find kind of amusing, that the term ‘cure’ and ‘curator’ are tangentially associated. Like you're healing by pulling together information.” — DJ Spooky Paul Miller, aka DJ Spooky, is the ultimate cre…

“I came to realize, over 20 years, that food was much more important than what you cooked for dinner or what cool ingredient you were into or what groovy restaurant you’re going to. And gradually what I wrote about...became the bigger picture in food. I don't want to leave cooking behind; cooking matters. But it's a small part of the food picture a…

“What really makes an incredible curator in science is what makes an incredible curator of anything. A lot of that is thinking deeply about the experience.” — Jennifer Frazier The Exploratorium is a beloved, hands-on museum in San Francisco, where science isn’t just something to learn about; it’s something to be uncovered and discovered as a kind o…

“The journey is not so much about how many people respond. You can just impact one person and they can impact you back.” - Bruce Muchelule When Bruce became a dad, he wasn’t quite sure how to know if he was doing things right. He reached out on Twitter to see if there were any support groups or places for dads to find peer mentorship. He couldn’t f…

“It's way better if members are passionate and loud than dispassionate and quiet. The fact that they care enough to yell is really a gift.” - Evan Hamilton Reddit is the mothership for sub-communities known as “subreddits,” each of which covers a different topic from ask historians to cats standing up. Subreddits are each managed by a team of volun…

“If you're going to go to your community and build with them, realize that you're going to have to support and prop them up. It's not a part-time job. It's a full-time thing.” - Todd Hansen In the Spring of 1987, a group of music fans and journalists organized a small live event in Austin, Texas. Around 700 people showed up. By 2019, South by South…

“The question is ‘how do I keep my volunteers on track?’ because they're hugely motivated.” - David Lyford-Smith If you spend a lot of time working with spreadsheets, you know they have a special power to rule the world. You can do almost anything with them from creating a shopping list to financial planning and analysis. Spreadsheets' powers lie i…

"We are a part of their success. We are a part of their team.” - Ashley Hackworth BTS is a seven-member South Korean boy band. They became the fastest-growing group since The Beatles to earn four US number-one albums, doing so in less than two years. The rise of BTS is in part thanks to a huge leaderless web of dedicated fans who call themself A.R.…

“Let's bring designers together and first talk about your wellbeing. Then let's talk about the next steps forward for you as a designer.” - Lewis Kang'ethe Lewis Kang'ethe was first championed as a community leader in primary school when his teacher asked him to spearhead the mathematics club. When the teacher asks, the answer is either, “yes or ye…

“The email that I would receive after every single town hall was, ‘I thought I was the only one.’” - Claire Wasserman By 2016, Claire Wasserman was fed up with men not taking her seriously in the workplace. For years, she’d internalized this marginalization as somehow her fault or her problem to struggle through alone. It was time for that to chang…

“I tell all my staff to have your hearts, your minds and your ears open to new ideas. It doesn't have to come from you to be a great idea.” - Adam Bedoian Margaritaville isn’t just a state of mind, it’s a real place. Seniors can live out their Buffett-inspired retirement dreams at the three Latitude Margaritaville retirement communities in Daytona …

“The strategy is the questions. You have to ask the right questions. If you don’t, you can be walking away from a smile.” - Chris Turner When Chris Turner was 12 years old he got a metal detector and fell in love with looking for history. Over the years, he would be on the beach or in a park and get approached by a frantic couple looking for their …