Curation: Defining the extraordinary through restraint
Created with Midjourney
Lately, I’ve been reducing the noise in my life. It started with my home—removing furniture that served no real purpose and replacing it with fewer, more elevated pieces. Then came color, refining my palette to be minimal yet balanced. This extended to my wardrobe, purchases, and ultimately, to where I invest my energy.
In a world of excess, curation is the last great differentiator. What we choose to highlight defines us. The same tools and information are available to everyone, but selection and arrangement require something more: taste.
Looking back, I can see how my taste has evolved. What once impressed me now feels excessive. What I once overlooked has become essential. A sensibility shaped by experience, exposure, and influence.
I didn’t grow up in a sophisticated environment. But I’m certain my grandmother—a woman of strength and elegance, the city’s first female bread delivery driver, yet someone who wore beautiful dresses with exquisite brooches and kept refined company—laid the foundation for my understanding of aesthetics.
Taste is abstract, difficult to define. Who decides what is good taste? I still wrestle with that question. But there’s something unmistakable about encountering it. It’s a cultivated instinct, shaped by learning, observation, and refinement. A readiness to be wrong, to change, and to let go—that’s at its core.
Great curation, like Raymond Carver’s writing or Tadao Ando’s architecture, is about knowing what matters—whether through subtraction or deliberate layering.
Consider a space where every element—light, proportion, texture—is chosen with purpose. Tadao Ando’s architecture embodies this. His use of concrete, shadow, and negative space reduces design to its most essential form. His buildings are minimalist yet poetic, proving that true beauty often comes from what is left out rather than what is added.
Radiohead’s A Moon Shaped Pool is lush and complex, yet seamless—every note thoughtfully placed, forming a continuous whole, proving that curation isn’t just about minimalism. Kelly Wearstler reveals the power of layering, balancing bold color, texture, and pattern with refined details, weaving historical influences into contemporary design. Though maximalist, her work is deeply intentional—every element purposeful and precise.
The most powerful brands and creators thrive not by offering everything, but by offering only what matters. Jil Sander built a legacy on precision, refining fashion to its essence.
Curation is storytelling—it guides, frames, and elevates, whether through clarity or carefully constructed ambiguity. And most of all, curation is about perspective. A carefully selected bookstore offers a different experience than a warehouse of bestsellers. A publishing house like Phaidon, where each book is a gem, is another example.
A well-curated mind filters out the excess and focuses on what’s meaningful.
How to curate with intent.
If curation is about selection, it is also about questioning. Here are a few questions to refine any curatorial process.
Core concept & intent
What is the unifying thread that connects these pieces, even if it's not immediately visible?
If this curation were a sentence, what would it say?
What tension or contradiction do I want to explore?
Am I curating for clarity, confusion, provocation, or nostalgia?
Selection & juxtaposition
What happens if I remove the most obvious or expected piece?
Where is the friction between these choices, and how does it serve the experience?
Does my selection leave room for interpretation, or does it dictate too much?
How do the edges of one piece bleed into the next?
Emotional & sensory impact
What is the rhythm of this curation—does it rise and fall like music, or hold a steady note?
What silence or absence within the curation makes it stronger?
If this were an olfactory experience, what would it smell like?
What emotional residue should remain after someone experiences it?
Context & audience perception
How does time affect this curation—does it feel timeless, urgent, or deliberately anachronistic?
What biases might the audience bring, and how do I want to subvert or reinforce them?
If I showed this to someone completely outside my world, what would they see first?
How does this curation change if viewed in isolation versus in a larger cultural context?
Unexpected dimensions
If an AI curated this same collection, how would it differ from mine?
What would a child notice that I have overlooked?
If this curation were made purely from mistakes or discarded elements, what would it look like?
How would this change if curated blindfolded, using only intuition?
If my own experience has taught me anything, it’s that curation isn’t just a skill—it’s an approach. It requires instinct, sensitivity, and restraint. It thrives on contrast—the tension between order and spontaneity, precision and imperfection. The world doesn’t need more manufactured perfection; it needs refinement with room for the raw and the real.
Further reading.
On Taste and Curation:
Pierre Bourdieu – Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste
Susan Sontag – Against Interpretation
On Minimalism and Restraint:
John Pawson – Minimum
Marie Kondo – The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up
On Maximalism and Layering:
Kelly Wearstler – Evocative Style
Robert Venturi – Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture
On Storytelling in Curation:
Robert McKee – Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting
Chip Heath & Dan Heath – Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die
On Curation in Business and Branding:
Michael Rock – Multiple Signatures: On Designers, Authors, Readers and Users
Seth Godin – This Is Marketing