Monday, October 5, 2009

Today In NYT Hypocrisy: Sunday Styles Ridicules Others For Misusing The Verb "Curate," While Sunday Business Misuses It On Same Day.

From "On The Tip Of Creative Tongues," by Alex Williams, Sunday Styles, page 1, 10/4/2009:

THE Tipping Point, a store in Houston that calls itself a sneaker lifestyle shop, does not just sell a collection of differently colored rubber soles, along with books, music and apparel. No, its Web site declares, the store “curates” its merchandise.

Promoters at Piano’s, a nightclub on the Lower East Side, announced on their Web site that they will “curate a night of Curious burlesque.”

Eric Demby, a founder of the Brooklyn Flea swap meet, does not hire vendors to serve grilled cheese sandwiches, pickles and tamales to hungry shoppers. He “personally curates the food stands,” according to New York magazine.

And to think, not so long ago, curators worked at museums.

The word “curate,” lofty and once rarely spoken outside exhibition corridors or British parishes, has become a fashionable code word among the aesthetically minded, who seem to paste it onto any activity that involves culling and selecting. In more print-centric times, the term of art was “edit” — as in a boutique edits its dress collections carefully. But now, among designers, disc jockeys, club promoters, bloggers and thrift-store owners, curate is code for “I have a discerning eye and great taste.”

Or more to the point, “I belong.”


From "Where The Hotel Is The Hub," by Brooks Barnes, Sunday Business, page 1, 10/4/2009:

THE Sunset Tower Hotel, once a dilapidated dump but now a power-broker capital in Hollywood, recently hired a detective. After all, a crime had been committed — at least in the eyes of its owner, Jeff Klein.

When US Weekly reported in August that Renée Zellweger and her new beau had guzzled Champagne in a Sunset Tower suite, Mr. Klein had a meltdown. The detective was hired and, soon, a room-service waiter was fired.

“He claimed he only told his mother,” Mr. Klein says. “I didn’t care. Gone!”

A New York society brat turned serious hotelier and restaurateur, Mr. Klein, 39, bought the Sunset Tower in 2004 and has transformed it partly by throwing out the handbook of how entertainment industry haunts are managed, especially in Los Angeles. A ban on media leaks about boldface business deals or celebrity frolicking is strictly enforced. Mr. Klein is also very careful about curating a clientele. Celebrities deemed out of place, including the rapper Sean Combs and Britney Spears, have been — gasp — turned away.

5 comments:

Roberto said...

At least no one's misusing curare.

Nice gotcha, Picker.

Anonymous said...

The biz section will never be as cool as the Style section but at least the biz section has never devoted an entire article to the question, "Looking for someone to curate your life?"

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/08/fashion/08storr.html

Anonymous said...

Dude or dudettes:

You missed a chance to harsh on one of your favorite targets, glorious Jill Abramson. She once devoted many words to asking whether the Times would just become a curator for the news.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/02/business/media/05askthetimes.html

Like do we have to do the work for you?

Girl said...

The "Style" Section is a joke.

Anonymous said...

sure, fluid usage tends towards appropriation of words, symbols, concepts, and other units of information to any and many an end.
nyt curates words, dehydrates language: often in what passes as arbitrary is the unworldly's subjugation to bias. not unlike walmart curating dvds and glossy mags.