This book argues for the role of curators as knowledge-makers across a number of fields. While the focus is on multidisciplinary curators, particularly those who work with combinations of science, technology, and art, it also points toward the history of curation to tease out the ways that multidisciplinary work has always been part of the collector's, and later, the curator's role, functionally integrating curatorial and interdisciplinary studies. This novel application of Arts Sciences Technology Studies (ASTS) ideas to curatorial studies is timely because it reaches beyond the analysis of the use of images by scientists or the ways art may be employed to improve the public understanding of science to offer a much-needed explanation of how actors position their work as art or science, considering the persistence of overlapping practices used in both communities. By providing an interdisciplinary look at curatorial practice in the context of the STS idea of knowledge-making, this book will be singular in the field.
What Curators Know will appeal to scholars of STS, the history of art, the history of science, museology, and visual culture as well as museum professionals, curators, and policymakers. The book engages literature in the contemporary arts, digital culture, computing history, medical humanities, media arts, museum studies, natural history, and political and public art. Practitioners working in curatorial or curatorial-adjacent professions, as well as administrators with art and science interests, will also find the text useful.