The day I decided I didn't want to be a 19th-Century European curator, I knew I would never have the experience of people coming and going 'ooh' and 'aah,' the way they do around the Monets. It just doesn't happen.

The privilege I've had as a curator is not just the discovery of new works... but what I've discovered about myself and what I can offer in the space of an exhibition - to talk about beauty, to talk about power, to talk about ourselves, and to talk and speak to each other.

Once I decided to write, to be published, I knew it would happen.

It's quite an obscure notion for a kid, no? To want to be a curator. But even then, I knew that I would do this.

I resist the temptation to curate my apartment.

As a child, our house had a backyard lined with roses tended vigilantly by my mother. So the fragrance fills me with nostalgia for my youth.