The Intentional Art of Curation

Putting action and meaning together

Modern  Rome by Giovanni Paolo Panini, 1757 (public domain - Metropolitan Museum of Art)

“What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?” — George Eliot, 1871

You’ve been to a museum, right?

As you wander around the galleries, stopping at the display cases and pausing in front of wall hangings to ponder the artist’s meaning, did you ever wonder how much of the collection is on display?

That is, have you considered what percentage of a museum’s holdings are shown at any given moment?

Take a guess. Fifty percent? Maybe 25 percent?

According to the chairwoman of the Americas department at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, “Most museums show between 2 and 4 percent of a collection.”

That’s astounding.

When you consider that museums, collectors, and content creators go to great lengths to assemble their miscellany, and that the vast majority of it never gets seen—that’s more than a shame.

Hence, the role of the curator.