Curator

A curator (from lat. Curator , from cura - care) is one who observes the progress of a certain work or other process ^[1] .

In the modern world, the word curator is used in many areas of activity: they talk about the curator of the academic group (he is a tutor ), the curator of a doctor , the curator of one or another direction in the activities of the bank, exchange and investment activities, enterprises, political organizations and the like. In the Soviet Union, curators were called KGB officers who were attached and supervised enterprises, institutes, cultural and other institutions .

Curator of contemporary art

However, the curator’s figure gained the greatest importance in the field of contemporary art , where the phenomenon of curator-stars arose in the 1980s and 1990s .

The curator not only technically organizes exhibitions, museum work or other art projects, but is also a co-author, since it is he who determines the relevance of a particular topic, actively collaborates with authors , helping them to implement their ideas and projects, so much so that, as notes Max Fry , “by and large, curatorial activity is such a fundamentally different form of authorship in art” ^[2] . The famous curator Victor Misiano defines the functions of the curator through comparison with the figure of a theater director ^[3] .

The scope of the curator depends on the scale of the project. Often in large international projects a group of curators is created, between which responsibilities are distributed. In contemporary art, the curator most often acts as the organizer of the artistic process in the framework of a specific project. The curator creates the general concept of the project , develops a strategy for its development, collects a group of artists for the selected concept and organizes the conditions for the implementation of the project in one form or another ( publications , exhibitions, master classes, and so on.)

The profession of a curator in contemporary art requires special training: for example, in 1995 at the Russian State University for the Humanities a training was opened on the specialty of “curating contemporary art projects” at the faculty of General Art History ^[4] .

University Curator

The highest administrative position at the Imperial Moscow University in the XVIII century . According to the Project on the founding of Moscow University (1755), “one or two of the most distinguished persons who would have the whole corps at their discretion and report on their needs” would be appointed to the post of curator following the example of European universities. The first curator was the founder of Moscow University, I. I. Shuvalov ^[5] .