Curator Quotes

• Cultural confinement takes place when a curator imposes his own limits on an art exhibition, rather than asking an artist to set his limits.

  Robert Smithson

  Art, Limits, Asking

  Robert Smithson, Jack D. Flam (1996). “Robert Smithson, the Collected Writings”, p.154, Univ of California Press

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• An exhibition is in many ways a series of conversations. Between the artist and viewer, curator and viewer, and between the works of art themselves. It clicks when an exhibition feels like it has answered some questions, and raised even more.

  Thelma Golden

  Art, Exhibitions, Way

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• A life accumulates a collection: of people, work and perplexities. We are all our own curators.

  Richard Fortey

  People, Collections, Perplexity

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• A curator is an information chemist. He or she mixes atoms together in a way to build an info-molecule. Then adds value to that molecule

  Robert Scoble

  Together, Information, Way

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• When you see something special, something inspired, you realise the debt we owe great curators and their unforgettable shows - literally unforgettable because you remember every picture, every wall and every juxtaposition.

  Charles Saatchi

  Wall, Special, Debt

  Charles Saatchi (2009). “My Name is Charles Saatchi and I Am an Artoholic”, Phaidon Press

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• I learned more from my mother than from all the art historians and curators who have informed me about technical aspects of art history and art appreciation over the years.

  David Rockefeller

  Family, Mother, Appreciation

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Curators are great, but they're inherently biased. Curators are always making an editorial decision. Those biases have really big implications.

  Ethan Zuckerman

  Decision, Bigs, Biased

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• As we become curators of our own contentment on the Simple Abundance path... we learn to savor the small with a grateful heart.

  Sarah Ban Breathnach

  Gratitude, Grateful, Heart

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• I was at the Smithsonian for twenty years, and I'm still at the Smithsonian as a curator emeritus, and I still plan to figure out what that means for me at this point in my life

  Bernice Johnson Reagon

  Mean, Years, Twenties

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• We are the curators of life on earth. We hold it in the palm of our hand.

  Helen Caldicott

  Inspirational, Life, Positive

  Helen Caldicott (1986). “Missile envy: the arms race and nuclear war”

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• I play a curator, the most American part you can think of. My work is to protect the Declaration of Independence. I work at the National Archives in Washington.

  Diane Kruger

  Thinking, Play, Independence

  "Diane Kruger for 'Troy'". Interview With Paul Fischer, www.darkhorizons.com. May 6, 2004.

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• Painters paint, and history continues to make fools of curators.

  Robert Genn

  Fool, Culture, Paint

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• A record is a concert without halls and a museum whose curator is the owner.

  Glenn Gould

  Museums, Records, Owners

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• You get to be your own curator of your own exhibits inside.

  Regina Spektor

  Exhibits

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• It's not curators, it's not critics, it's not the public, it's not collectors who find great artists - it's other artists.

  David Galenson

  Artist, Recognition, Great Art

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• Gradually as you become curator of your own contentment, you will learn to embrace the gentle yearnings of your heart.

  Sarah Ban Breathnach

  Healing, Heart, Contentment

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• I don't often go to curator or artist walk-throughs of exhibitions. For a critic, it feels like cheating. I want to see shows with my own eyes, making my own mistakes, viewing exhibitions the way most of their audience sees them.

  Jerry Saltz

  Cheating, Mistake, Eye

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• The leader...is rarely the brightest person in the group. Rather they have extraordinary taste, which makes them more curators than creators. They are appreciators of talent and nurturers of talent and they have the ability to recognize valuable ideas.

  Warren G. Bennis

  Inspirational, Ideas, Leader

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• The way something looks or sounds is also what it means. Words as visual and aural phenomena, which mainly poets, not critics and prose writers, tend to be obsessed with. I think maybe I'm more of a curator than I am a writer in the strict sense because I am interested in how everything on the page, in a space, works together.

  Masha Tupitsyn

  Mean, Thinking, Space

  "https://logger.believermag.com/post/2013/10/24/true-lovers-are-as-rare-as-true-rebels". The Believer interview, logger.believermag.com. October 24, 2013.

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• We are not only a civilization of amateur photographers; we are amateur curators, editors, and publishers.

  Charlotte Cotton

  Civilization, Editors, Photographer

  "Charlotte Cotton: Surveillance Revisited". Interview with Nicole Miller, www.guernicamag.com. June 15, 2016.

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• I like thinking of the writer as a kind of curator; the collection as curiosity cabinet - in a non-demeaning, non-objectifying sense - but an array, a set of offerings.

  Leslie Jamison

  Thinking, Offering, Curiosity

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Graffiti doesn't exist unless someone got a photo, because it's gone immediately.

  Jeffrey Deitch

  Graffiti, Gone

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• While the space for artists and curators has increased enormously, maybe, just maybe, that's left room for too many people calling themselves artists and curators who are simply not up to the term.

  Jerry Saltz

  Artist, Space, People

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• One curator said he didn't want my work in his gallery because it was so simple even children understood it. I thought, what a wonderful tribute!

  Ted Harrison

  Art, Children, Work

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• I also take pleasure in the so-called negative power in Grotjahn's work. That is, I love his paintings for what they are not. Unlike much art of the past decade, Grotjahn isn't simply working from a prescribed checklist of academically acceptable, curator-approved 'isms' and twists.

  Jerry Saltz

  Art, Past, Negative

  "Making the Spirits Dance". nymag.com. June 5, 2011.

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