A Transition from Art Curators to Cultural Urbanists

Following on a recent reminder of how competitive finding an academic position can turn out to be, I wonder if there are options for taking up a position in between the fields of art, academia, and cities. Just as curators have emerged on the interface between art worlds and their social environments with institutionalization quickly following suit of their emergence as a distinct social role, perhaps urbanists that seek to mediate culture and cities might be able to perform the same transition in the uncertain terrain of emergent institutionalization of novel social roles. Largely, it must have been a de facto legitimization of curators' functions as art exhibitions have received social, economic and urban functions previously unforseen by art historians. As art history has entered the period of its theoretical crisis, dating to around thirty years ago, it seems that the field of art became ripe for a kind of transition that the agency of curators as power brokers has only sped up. Similarly, I assume the coming end of social theory as we know it, not unlike the withering of art theory, readies the larger social field of cities for a new breed of cultural power brokers that might find in urbanists their embodiment.