A curator of a cultural heritage institution (e.g. archive, library, museum) is a person who manages the institution's collection.
In the United Kingdom it also to applied to government employees who monitor the quality of contract archaeological work under PPG 16 and are considered to manage the cultural resource of a region.
In contemporary art, the curator is the person who organizes an exhibition. A new figure in contemporary art is the freelance curator, who does not have affiliation with any particular gallery or museum.
External link
How good a curator would you make? The Exhibitionists
Independent/ Freelance Curator - often used within the field of contemporary art curating to refer to an expanded field of exhibition practices and making that goes well beyond the confines of traditional museums and galleries. Usually not affliliated to museums or galleries, independent curators often also work as writers, critics or teachers in order to make a living. Figures such as Harald Szeemann (Switzerland) can be seen as pioneer independent curators. Today, as art institutions face an array of new challenges - management and financial to media and digital related - the role of the curator is also being re-thought. One consequence of this has been the emergance of academic courses in contemporary art and curatorial practice (Royal College of Art, UK/ Bard College USA etc). Independent curators can develop their own idiosyncratic methods for exhibition, be invited by museums and galleries to curate exhibitions in their spaces or operate in hybrid roles (publishing, collecting, installing, designing etc). 'Tactical Curating' is a term used by independent curator Roger McDonald (based in Tokyo with AIT) to refer to the peculiar characteristics and advantages of operating independently: see http://www.rogermc.blogs.com/tactical