Losing a curator is easier than people think. It requires no rudeness, no mistakes, and no bad work. It happens through pure, unremarkable friction, and it happens constantly. Here is the method, should you wish to continue.
Day one: meet them somewhere ephemeral
A private view, a conference hallway, a comment thread. Have a genuinely warm conversation. Exchange nothing storable — ideally just a promise to be in touch, which converts a specific relationship into a vague intention.
Day three: save something partial
If you must record them, save only a first name in a note, or an Instagram handle with no context. Enough to feel diligent; not enough to act on in a month.
Day five: rely on the follow-up you will definitely send
Plan to write on Monday, when things calm down. Things will not calm down. Monday will arrive as a different set of urgencies and the follow-up will move to next week, which is where follow-ups go to be quietly euthanised.
Day seven: let the context decay
By now you have forgotten which show they mentioned, which of your pieces they liked, and whether they said spring or autumn. Without that, the email you eventually write must be generic — and a generic email to a curator is indistinguishable from every other generic email they receive.
Day ten: reach the awkwardness threshold
Enough time has passed that writing now requires an apology for not writing sooner. That apology is unpleasant to draft, so the message is postponed again, permanently. The relationship has not ended in any dramatic sense. It has simply stopped, which is the same outcome with better manners.
To do the opposite
Capture the person the same day, with two lines of context: what they said, and what you agreed. That is the whole intervention. The follow-up then writes itself in ninety seconds and does not require an apology, because it arrives while the conversation is still recent enough to reference.