Please explain the word “curate” as a verb. I couldn’t find any definition of it as a verb online, in the sense used below. I look forward to your feedback.
davidmich
“Though it tells a nonfictional story, Serial is a story all the same. It arranges and rearranges the facts, it curates the dialogue, it chooses which of the witnesses and friends to track down after 15 years, and which should stay buried in the past.”
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“Yet the way the show is curated, and the way Jay’s been caricatured up until now, shifts my sympathies to him, at least for the moment. Though as a narrator Koenig is remarkably even-keeled, her tendency to annotate the evidence that is bad news for Adnan has been slightly grating. She is an experienced and smart journalist, but journalists always have angle, and hers has been clear from when she reopened a case that was placed on her desk.”
They’re using it to mean select or compile with a professional eye towards the emotional or persuasive impact the final layout will have on the user, viewer, or listener. It’s hip and new and it’s supposed to imply that care and attention to detail went into the selection, much in the same way a museum curator will create a diorama or exhibition for maximum wow factor out of pre-created pieces the museum already owns.
Which sources have you checked? Here’s the definition from dictionary.com. The definitions both correspond to the way “curate” is being used in those examples.
I searched quite a few. Many do not have that definition. I missed dictionary.com. Thank you all.
davidmich
curate
"to pull together, sift through, and select for presentation, as music or website content:
“We curate our merchandise with a sharp eye for trending fashion,” the store manager explained.
As a professional curator, I agree with the definitions already provided. However, I would point out that the usage in the article is unusual. Curation usually applies to physical objects, not to things like dialogue on TV shows.
I’ve seen it used a lot to refer to things like playlists of videos on youtube. (There’s a podcast called EarBiscuits that is nothing but interviews with popular youtube video makers and it’s slightly hilarious how when they ask how the person really started getting famous, the answer is always some variation of “Well, my video about X was featured on the front page of youtube back when it was curated by actual humans and not an algorithm…”) I think once you move from physical objects to discrete intangibles, the jump to dialogue or sound design is less awkward.
Yes, and in some museum professionals circles’, the new usage is viewed with suspicion. Curators have a specialized skill-set and specific training in curation; they don’t necessarily like to see their terminology coopted by, for example, Pinterest users.