Directorial Curation

Ann Blair’s typology of curatorial modes across the history of information management traces a lineage from preservation (the manuscript era: deciding which texts were worth the labor of copying) through selection (the print era: deciding which of the many available texts were worth the reader’s attention) through navigation (the digital era: finding relevant material within the vast, poorly organized landscape of the web). Each shift preserved the previous modes while adding a new layer. The AI era adds a fourth, distinctive mode: directorial curation, the guiding of a generative process to produce intellectual material that does not yet exist in any available source. The model is the patron who commissioned a work of art in the Renaissance—specifying subject, scale, mood, and purpose while leaving execution to the artist—but the AI practitioner’s directorial role is more continuous and more granular: she does not issue a commission and wait for the result