Your last statement says a lot about changing with the times, and offers a refreshing perspective. Does information we research about a particular artist and/or their work have to remain static for a cultural institution to function?

I think the more fluidity a curator can bring to light about and artist, and/or a body of work_ where their interactions with the public are included, the more a work continues to live and the artist’s life converses, even interacts with the present!

The function of the work is to have its own life out in the world; every good artist understands this when they let it go.

This is where web 2.0 has changed the economic calculation. Expertise in many areas has become commodified because it’s easier to look things up yourself rather than consult the expert.

But expert curators still have value. Take the news for example. I don’t need a journalist to tell me what’s happened but I do look to a great op-ed journalist who makes sense of what’s happening. I may prefer to look up a wine choice on my iPhone but I might want a sommelier to explain to me why this wine tastes right and why it goes with this food. I don’t need an art curator to tell me what’s “good art” but I like to hear the story behind a piece of work (whether in person or through my iPod).

Curators who simply tell you what you should like are a dying breed. Those who shine a light on why you might like something, who enhance your appreciation of a subject, they’re going to still be in high demand.

Oh, please.

Look, I don’t see why we have to appropriate a new word (“curating”) for something that editors have been doing for centuries (ya know, editing) — except that if you wanna be hired as a consultant and bill 200 bucks an hour plus expenses, I suppose it pays to find new words to describe the same old work. Otherwise, you’d just sound like you’re stating the obvious. We’ll IMPRESS them by taking a term from another field and using if freshly in a new context! They will SWOON!

OK, sorry, you think editing should be more collaborative, should allow user participation — some kind of wiki-news judgment. That’s fine. I’m sure this will be a good thing. But I get tired of this snarky pseudo-populist sarcasm (“priesthood” “great unwashed”).

Mostly reporters and editors are just normal people doing their jobs, trying for the most part to do the best they can. And yes, actually, there are skills involved in their jobs, skills that are learned with experience and through mentors — as in any line of work. I hope you’re not suggesting the skill someone develops by spending years in their line of work is unimportant, irrelevant, useless?