Young Currators

NYT feature: audio and photos here "Young Currators Speak"

"For a 37-year-old curator, Mr. Roy seems pretty cool about it all, considering that only a few years ago he started his professional life selling tickets at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Yet as museum directors have come to realize, younger minds attract younger audiences. And Mr. Roy is just one of a growing group of rising curatorial stars cutting quite a different figure from the age-old image of museum curator as a fusty academic.
Sitting in his office, a small space whose walls are covered with movie posters, Mr. Roy is tall, elegant and articulate when talking about how he landed the coveted job of running MoMA’s film department, the second-largest at the institution after painting and sculpture.
“When I first heard they were looking for someone I was convinced I was NOT the person,” he said. “I was too young, too out there, not academic.”
Yet as soon as he got the call to come in and talk about the position, he said, he had to “at least accept a conversation.” Fifteen interviews later, he was offered the job. “It was fascinating, nerve-racking and a bit like “American Idol,’ ” he recalled."
article here