Everyone's a... curator?

It seems in the past year, the term curator has become increasingly popular. Our friends at Wikipedia define curator as “a content specialist responsible for an institution's collections.” The article also specifically cites galleries, museums, libraries or archives as the institutions in this definition. As many of us who study or have jobs with museums know, this is a pretty standard definition of what a curator does.

However, it seems like the definition of curator is changing in the digital age. Many websites are adopting the term curator in a variety of ways.

Etsy, a website for users to sell homemade and vintage goods, uses the term “curator” to describe a guest blogger who chooses items from different sellers and highlights them in a blog post. Unlike a museum curator, whose qualifications are usually from years of study and research in a specific topic or field, the guest curator on Etsy is often times someone in a design or aesthetic related field. Is this a stretch or does the title fit well?

Another website, Brain Pickings, defines itself as being "about curating interestingness — picking culture’s collective brain for tidbits of stuff that inspires, revolutionizes, or simply makes us think." Topics range from Fair Use to Retrofuturism and often use language similar to label text in museum exhibitions. Their post on Retrofuturism is actually a topic I was interested in addressing the museum my friend and I are planning.

Did Brain Pickings do a good job? I know there are things I would change, but would it be for the better? Should the term curator be redefined?

Museum of the Week: Beatles Museum

Earlier this week the Beatles Museum opened in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The museum is based entirely on the private collection of Rodolfo Vazquez, who earned a Guinness World record for his collection in 2001. The museum hosts a collection of over 8,500 objects and a thematic restaurant and bar.

Credit: CNN

This is the first Beatles Museum in South America, but not the first in the world. The Beatles Story, which opened in 1990, is a museum dedicated to The Beatles in Liverpool, England. The exhibitions take you through the life and times of The Beatles and spans two locations with over 23,000 sq ft. in space.

What I find to be most interesting about the museum in Buenos Aires is that it was founded entirely on the collection of one man. In the past, entire art museums have been founded on the collection of one individual or a group of individuals, sometimes concerned with the education of society.

As people are collecting a variety of objects in our material-driven society, will we see more collections of memorabilia as the foundation for museums?

Step One

Welcome to Deaccessioning the Student, a blog about one graduate research assistant's final semester and beyond. In a museum, deaccessioning is the process of disposing, selling or trading objects from a museum collection. Many decisions must be made, not the least of which is deciding how to get ride of the object. Trade it to another institution? Sell it to a private collector. Students must also make difficult decisions about their futures, such as deciding between pursuing more education and applying for a job.

In this blog, I will be covering a multitude of topics, primarily focused on my graduate exit project and my work at a local science museum. In addition, I hope to address current issues in museums and any interesting ideas that come my way.

Step one is to decide to deaccession and since I graduate in May, I don't really have too much of a choice. The second step is to decide how to do so. Hopefully, I'll have a job by May, but follow along to find out how everything goes.