In a message dated 00-04-20 10:59:01 EDT, Robin Panza wrote:

<< b)  The term is even more (in my opinion) abused in the US by the fact that
 more and more institutions give the title "curator" to people who are
 primarily researchers.  Curation is done by collection managers. >>

This is largely true in our museum, where only someone who does research can
get the title curator--although most are at least nominally in charge of a
collection.  While curatorial research has always been emphasized, it was
typically collection-based in the old days--now it doesn't need to be.  I
think this growing phenomenon is related to the issue of some non-collecting
museums, by the way.  If a curator doesn't need a collection, it can be
argued that the museum in general doesn't need one either.  It's definitely a
factor.

There certainly are "curators" who are interested chiefly in the theoretical
aspects of cultural history and who seem to think that the study of material
culture is too, well, materialistic and crass.

There is an analogous phenomenon in academia--"research professors," i.e.,
professors who don't teach.

I think that, while semantic changes and linguistic evolution often quite
naturally reflect cultural change, at other times they precede and cause
it--sometimes inadvertently, sometimes quite deliberately.  That's why I'm
suspicious of attempts to redefine old words.  For some reason they always
make me think of Orwell (and Hitler, who tried to redefine Jews and Gypsies
as "non-persons," with an obvious agenda).

David Haberstich

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