As a human creation par excellence, languages and their lexicons have been born, lived and died together with the dramatically beautiful history of civilization. Part of the process is the mode of expression fostered by art in its evolution. Beauty and fidelity to the model were accepted ways of measuring the mastery of a painter. And that word was enough.
Today we have to go further and call plastic, visual and even conceptual artists all those who paint, sculpt, take photos, photomontages, videos, deconstruct what happens to them, or do a performance or an installation. The latter has been expanding its space in the dictionary of the Spanish language.
Aside from the action and effect of providing electric power or wired telephone service to industrial, educational or sports facilities, the feminine noun (in Spanish) that defines the "arrangement of a space or a set of objects for artistic purposes has been added to its meaning."
If we use the term “curator” in a context far from the visual arts, our interlocutors may think of someone who takes care of "some thing or group of assets belonging to a minor or to someone incapable of managing them."
The framework provided by the biennials and art fairs is the source of the universalization of terms such as performance, dealer, marchand, videoart, Arco, Art Bassel and others, which serve as effective communicative links between artists, collectors, curators, critics and people who only seek to buy cheap and sell for more.
Other terms such as speculation, marketing, propaganda, long-term investment, selling museum pieces and operations that reach figures such as the 450 million dollars that a buyer paid to Christie's auction house for Leonardo da Vinci's Salvator Mundi painting, are words and maneuvers that - beyond trade and stock market speculation - have managed to insert themselves with clear meanings in the public and hidden mechanisms that move the art world in these times.
Maybe it's just new content for the term patrons. Who knows!