The primary responsibility of a curator generally includes the acquisition, care, presentation, and interpretation of works of art in a museum's collection . But curators also play a vital and essential role in our understanding of art and culture both past and present. They challenge existing perceptions and also shape the discourse on art to come in the future. Through the selection of artworks and the resulting juxtaposition and interpretation, curators are able to generate a dialogue between the artwork, the public and the institution. It is clear that the curator's role is certainly broad and encompasses the entire physical and intellectual experience of an exhibition. But does this necessarily mean that curation is essential to art appreciation? Rossen Ventzislavov, in his essay Idle Arts: Reconsidering the Curator, argues that curating should be considered a form of figurative art. He structures his defense of the curator in three parts. It begins by discussing how the curator creates artistic value through the very act of selection and by introducing new “custodial narratives.” The importance of selection in the curator's work is evident in Ventzislavov's discussion of Henri Matisse's The Dance and its placement next to a staircase at MoMA. He quotes Walter Benjamin, who believes that the placement of The Dance embraces the tradition of “pre-museum spectatorship” by fostering an environment in which visitors can have a more intimate experience with the work. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Marcel Duchamp's well-known gesture of artistic selection was simply to place a piece of common plumbing in a gallery. Ventzislavov writes: “Duchamp's work saw the beginning of considering the gallery space as dialogically related and/or equivalent to the art it hosts.” His works redefined the limits of what it meant to be an artist-curator. Ventzislavov then goes on to respond to arguments put forward by those who disagree with him on the question of whether or not curators create artistic value, contextualizing his response by discussing our evolving definitions of artists and works of art. Towards his conclusion, Ventzislavov examines the problematic normative structure that favors the rigid division of labor between artist and curator and considers their respective roles as they have traditionally been assumed: “The artist makes art in the primary and naked sense of introducing something new in the world, creating value ex nihilo, so to speak. The rest of the art world engages in art in a secondary and mediated sense.” He concludes that as long as a normative hierarchical structure exists, the gap between artist and curator will also persist. In Curator as Auteur, Steven Lubar writes about the curatorial philosophy of Richard Rabinowitz, one of the leading public historians in the United States. and the curator of the Slavery in New York exhibition at the New-York Historical Society in 2005-2006. Rabinowitz believes in interpretive exhibitions and in the curator as author. For him, his work is about creating stories around objects so that they inspire visitors to make up stories for themselves. Exhibitions must be about stories and narratives, which can have many dimensions. He sees two dimensions to time, writing that “to interpret is to imagine a cast of historical actors emerging from the document and another group of modern visitors encountering it. Historical time and expository time converge. He insists on the importance of narrative for interpretive design, disparaging exhibition designers who do not appreciate historical narrative and.