What does it mean to be a curator?
For a museum, they would be the keeper. They are someone who has care and oversight over a collection. They build a process of selecting, organizing, and looking after the chosen items.
It is so tempting to think that curation is unoriginal. That you are simply a collector. That it is not art. It is a low effort to curate and a high effort to create. However, to get better, we need to learn from the best. To know who they are, the experts need to be surfaced. It is like a quest to find the best treasures.
Curation for me has led to the intentional aspiration of what I want my own creation to model from. The wheel does not need recreation. We’re taught in school, that borrowing is plagiarism. This gets drilled into our minds taking much longer to get unlearned.
The broad population needs curators. Most do not know where to look at themselves. We are living in the age of abundant information rather than scarcity. Bluebooks aren’t necessary. We have Google. As Peter Parker said in Spiderman, “With power comes great responsibility”. This includes the everyday consumer who needs curators.
If curated effectively, consumers do not need to be interested in your taste. They will appreciate the gems you have found across the Internet that they were missing out on.
Readers are like sheep and need their shepherds in certain areas. While being deep with a subject matter, you are honing expertise that others do not have. This can be very helpful. Choose to use this resourcefulness.
Patterns and trends get noticed through curation. While crafting a favorite menu of foods, you show the customer your perspective of what the best options are at your restaurant. The same goes for advertising a new Spotify playlist that you curated. It is intentional what you kept off and what you included. You develop a style and unique perspective that is only your own.
With crafting the skill for curation comes creation of one’s own perspective.