Is curation a form of criticism, or are the two disciplines closely related?

• Historically, both curation and criticism were professions that required formal training and knowledge
• Today, you don’t need to possess a particular expertise to be a curator, but it helps
• Today, you don’t need to be able to think critically about your subject to be a curator, but it helps
• Ultimately, your success or failure as a curator or critic depends on your ability to find and connect with an audience

The more I think about curatorship, and especially its most liberal definition (i.e. curation = selection), the more I recognise how pervasive it is in my life.

I curate my social media feeds every day, tailoring them by following or unfollowing other profiles that suit my interests, and hiding content I don’t care to see.

On a regular basis I read articles with titles like “The ten best milkshakes in Melbourne”, which is a form of curation — though these articles are surely paid for and influenced by Big Milkshake.

When I want to dive into a new genre of music, I often do so by reading the curated “Ultimate Box Set” guides on RateYourMusic.

Last week I presented an episode of The Graveyard Shift on RRR — the playlist, which took me forever to put together, is definitely an exercise in curation.

Even the cultural criticism websites I read every day perform a type of curation, by choosing which films/albums to cover. By choosing to review a particular piece of media, the website is essentially saying “this is something worth discussing”, which in itself is an act of curation.

Having said all that, curation requires less of an intellectual rigour than criticism does — at least, less than the form of criticism that I’m interested in. The idea of a future as a “curator” fills me with disgust, but luckily no one really cares what I think and so there is no danger of too many people listening to my recommendations.