Words of the Moment: Curate

Mary Ann Huston

Above is a picture of the recently named curate at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Houston.

For hundreds of years, this (or a male version of same) is what people thought of when they saw the word curate.  The word was derived from the Latin, curate or cura, meaning care.  Curates of the Episcopal Church were religious persons charged with the care of souls.

The word spread to museums a bit later.   A curator at a museum would organize and select items (presumably with care) on a given theme.   Exhibits were said to be curated by one or more persons.

In the last 10 years the verb "curate" has spread all over the place.

This morning's New York Times has a moving front-page article entitled "Civil Rights Sins, Curated by One of the Sinners."

Yesterday's WSJ Magazine featured comments from six lofty persons on the topic of Taste.  Anne Bass, the famous socialite, said, "It's more about curation today, the development of personal preferences."

Basically, "curate" now means to gather a collection thoughtfully.  Given the looser boundaries this new definition suggests, curate has become a more common, and sometime rather pretentious word.  I quote some examples.

       An online merchant says, "One of the things we're really good at is curating the perfect
       gift at the perfect price."

       An organization called Visitphilly.org invites tourists to "curate your own experience."
       (And if you are going to Philadelphia, I would urge you to include the Barnes Foundation
        and Longwood Gardens in your curation.)

        This month, it was announced that Katy Perry had been named to "guest curate" Madonna's
         Art for Freedom Project.  (I don't know about this one; Katy Perry is a huge pop star, but
        but my guess is she doesn't know as much about art as any of the curators down at the
        Metropolitan Museum.)

        Many, many social media people engage in long discussions about curating material for their
       platforms.  One question posed recently by a "social and content accelerator" was, "Do you
       know when to create and when to curate?"  And Facebook was "Rumored to Be Hiring
        Editors to Curate Stories for Its Upcoming 'Paper' Project." (I have some experience in the
        word game; in fact, "curating" is part of the editing process.)

        The Whitney Museum of American Art, a fabulous place, now invites fans to "Curate Your
        Own Membership."

That last one bugs me.  If you become a regular contributor to a museum, you may join at the $100 level or the $5,000 level, but you don't really curate (i.e., collect thoughtfully) anything.  Perhaps the Whitney ought to hire a copy editor to check marketing materials before they are released.  With all the newspaper layoffs in recent years, the expense would be quite modest.

Now I'm going to test-drive the word in some sentences I might use.

"I have curated a variety of spices in my kitchen cupboard."

"I curated table settings and china for my dinner party last week."

"My wardrobe of business suits was curated over many years."

"In my library, you will find a curated collection of books of humor."

See?  It doesn't work.  Sounds too highfalutin'.  Not for me.