FOR WHOM: a book that all aspiring curators should have read at least once in their lives

WHY: Obrist explains how curating, after all, is "an attempt at cross-cultural pollination, or a way of drawing maps."

WHEN: to be read anytime, anywhere, a book to keep in your bag

LANGUAGE: Italian
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How does an exhibition come into being? What is the role of the curator? Why can we all consider ourselves curators? Interweaving personal and professional memories related to his multifaceted work in the arts, Hans Ulrich Obrist explains that curating, at bottom, is "an attempt at pollination between cultures, or a way of drawing maps, which opens up new paths through a city, a people or a world."

Magnetically suspended between autobiographical narrative and reflection on curating as a cultural practice by no means limited to museums-the theatrical impresario Sergej Djagilev, founder of the Ballets Russes and Obrist's personal hero, was an exceptional curator for his talent in engaging diverse artistic sensibilities,"Making an Exhibition" is a free-flowing journey of enlightening and never conventional encounters and conversations with the artists, writers and intellectuals who most inspired Obrist .

Bouncing briskly between exhibitions, international festivals, continents and centuries, it restores the profile of a profession that is far from closed in on itself, to the point of suggesting that the proliferation of ideas, information and objects that qualifies the contemporary world leaves no alternative: selecting the best, curating our content is an indispensable exercise of everyday life, an act of survival that affects us all.