> ...their collection is of little value except as a whole. I agree that citation adds value to a collection. That’s why we pay curators, after all! But, I wou

> ...their collection is of little value except as a whole. I agree that citation adds value to a collection. That’s why we pay curators, after all! But, I would also claim that the benefit of curation to the value of the collection as a whole probably scales with the size of the collection, if we’re talking about art or history museums. For instance, having an entire, working 1960s mainframe that’s used routinely for demonstrations at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View is extremely valuable, beyond the monetary cost it would take to acquire and set up the physical hardware. The same system, non working, and with “do not touch” signs all around, is significantly less valuable. Likewise, a museum with the resources to pull off an exhibit like the Warhol retrospective that was at SFMOMA recently can a full picture of how an artist grows and develops throughout a career in a way that a single work, or handful of works, cannot.