How to Curate Art in Your Home Like an Expert

If your growing art collection has begun to take over your living spaces, it’s time to learn how to curate art like a professional. Not only will this allow you to regain control over your collection, but it will also make your home feel more welcoming, organized, and beautiful. Prism Specialties has compiled our best art curation tips to help you through this process.

What Is Curation?

Curation is the process of caring for a collection of items. Curators who work at museums are tasked with managing, growing, studying, and exhibiting the collection under their charge. The curator is expected to be a subject matter expert who knows virtually everything about the collection they manage.

Some curators also clean and repair the items in their collection; in other organizations, curators work closely with conservators who perform those tasks instead.

When it comes to a home art collection, the curation process is completely up to the owner. Home art curation should include:

  • Thoughtfully displaying artwork in the home
  • Growing the collection
  • Cleaning and maintaining pieces as necessary
  • Securely storing pertinent paperwork, such as certificates of authenticity and insurance policies

How to Curate Art at Home

Whether you created or purchased your art collection, it deserves to be cared for. And you deserve to enjoy your collection every day! These simple tips will help you curate your art collection like a professional:

  • Focus on the Room’s Energy
    What kind of energy do you want to feel in your living room? What about your bedroom? Select and display artwork that creates the desired vibe for each space.
  • Create a Theme for Each Space
    This doesn’t mean that all your watercolors have to hang in the same room. Instead, play around with your pieces to see what themes present themselves – perhaps it’s a similar color palette or subject matter. Don’t be afraid to experiment by grouping a few ink drawings, photographs, and oil paintings. Mixing modern and traditional fine art can create a striking visual effect for a space.
  • Coordinate Art with Furniture
    As you work through the process of arranging your art, it’s important to harmonize the display with your other belongings. Consider how your art and furniture coordinate with each other. Find pieces that come together to create the desired atmosphere for the room.
  • Thoughtfully Grow Your Collection
    Once you have selected a theme for each space in your home, it will become easier to find new pieces that fit into your existing collection. Finding just the right piece to enhance a theme in your home is a truly exciting experience!
  • Use Matching Frames for Wall Art
    Once you have grouped your pieces into themes, think about changing the colors, shapes, and materials of their frames. Custom framing can be a fast, affordable way to completely change the look and feel of your art. What effect could you create by swapping a room’s artwork into ornate gold frames? If you have several small pieces grouped together, what would they look like in similar black frames with different mattes?

Choose Prism Specialties for Art Cleaning and Maintenance

Prism Specialties wants to help you maintain and preserve your art collection. Our Master Restorers are trained and experienced in working with all kinds of artwork. When you are ready to take control of your art collection, your local Prism Specialties office will work with you and your cherished pieces. You can call our home office at 888-826-9429 for immediate assistance.

Curation isn’t just for physical objects – our colleagues at Prism Specialties can help you recover old family photos and other files from damaged hard drives. Then you can get your digital collection organized too.