Built for curators
Everything a show needs
for research, writing,
and exhibition.
Not a generic AI bolted onto your workflow. Every feature in Curatorial was designed around how curators actually work — moving between fieldwork, archives, studio visits, and the blank page.
Research tools
From scattered notes
to structured insight
A notebook for every line of inquiry. Gather the sources for a question into one notebook, then work inside it — ask it questions and get answers grounded in your own sources, map the connections, surface the gaps in your argument, and draft from the studio. Not a chatbot with the internet; a study with your shelves.
Notebooks
Assemble the sources for one question, then interrogate exactly that set. Chat answers are grounded in your notebook’s sources, and the studio drafts briefings and artefacts from them.
Insight Extraction
Upload any document and watch Curatorial extract the key insights, themes, and arguments. PDF catalogues, exhibition texts, academic papers — all become searchable knowledge.
Synthesis & Gap Analysis
See who argues what, by what method, in one sortable matrix you can export. Then find the perspectives, periods and traditions your shelves don’t cover yet — and turn each gap into a to-do.
Connection Mapping & Knowledge Graph
See how your sources relate: a graph you can filter by strength, a timeline of when each was written, and an entity map of the artists, movements and institutions they share.
Comparative Analysis
Put sources side by side against a question of your own. The AI lays out each position, where they contradict, and where they quietly agree — then carries the result into an essay or a note.
Semantic Search
Ask questions of your research in plain language. "Which artists in my library engaged with themes of migration?" finds answers across hundreds of documents instantly.
Scan on demand: Pro and above · Automatic scans: Scholar and above
Research Radar — the reading finds you
Point the radar at a show or a theme and it scans new academic papers and press for what’s relevant, checks them against what you already hold, and flags only what’s genuinely new for your review. Nothing is added to your library without you.
Capture anywhere
The workspace that
comes with you.
Text a photo of a wall label from the gallery floor and it becomes a draft artwork record. Voice-memo a studio visit, forward a PDF, jot down a note — each one is parsed, you confirm, and it lands in the right project, searchable from any device. Nothing is saved until you say so.
Photos become records
Snap a wall label or a business card. Curatorial reads it into a draft artwork or person record for you to confirm.
Voice memos, transcribed
Talk through a studio visit on the way home. The transcript is saved as a note in the project you name.
Files, links and notes
Forward a PDF, a link or a thought. Ask the same chat for anything in your library, or to tag, move and export a bibliography.
Works in Telegram and WhatsApp. Connect your Claude Desktop, AI assistant or other desktop app (via MCP) to access your library and projects.
Writing tools
Your voice,
enhanced.
Writing for exhibition is a distinct discipline. It demands scholarly rigour and accessible clarity in the same breath. These tools don't write for you — they help you write better.
Socratic Essay Coaching
Don't receive a draft — develop one. The AI coaches you with questions that deepen your argument, challenge your assumptions, and help you find your own thesis.
Style Learning
Upload samples of your past writing and Curatorial learns your voice. Suggestions adapt to your vocabulary, sentence rhythm, and theoretical register.
Hierarchy of Concerns Editing
Revision that works from the outside in: structure and argument first, then paragraph flow, then sentence-level clarity. The same method taught in the best writing programmes.
Sounding Board Mode
Sometimes you just need to think out loud. Sounding Board responds to your half-formed ideas with clarifying questions, not answers — helping you work out what you actually think.
Content Repurposing
One exhibition essay becomes wall text, a press release, social media posts, and a grant narrative. Curatorial adapts your content to each format while preserving your voice.
Precision tools
Citations, translations,
done right.
The technical scaffolding of curatorial work, handled with care.
Cultural Translation
Translate exhibition texts, artist statements, and research across eight languages — English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, and Arabic — while preserving citations, academic register, and your authorial voice. Arabic output is set right-to-left.
Citation Extraction
Paste in any text and extract properly formatted citations in APA, MLA, and Chicago. Import your library from Zotero or Mendeley, and enrich metadata against CrossRef and DOI. Export as BibTeX. (Scholar and above.)
OCR Processing
Scanned exhibition catalogues from the 1970s. Hand-annotated gallery notes. Archive photographs. OCR turns any image of text into searchable, editable content.
Smart Document Chunking
Long documents are intelligently split at meaningful boundaries — by section, argument, or theme — so your AI analysis works with coherent units, not arbitrary page breaks.
Team tools
From solo research
to shared exhibitions.
Because Curatorial holds the project’s works, people and approvals, the materials you generate stay in step with the show — and the team can see what’s approved, what’s changed and what’s outstanding at a glance.
Approvals & Edit Oversight
See which texts and documents are approved, which have changed since, and what’s still waiting — with the comment thread behind each decision, instead of a trail of forwarded PDFs.
Materials That Follow the Project
Media kits, checklists, object lists and presentations draw on your live artwork and people records — update the show and the documents follow. Build and track agreements and proposals with templates and approval workflows.
Role-Based Permissions
Invite collaborators with precisely the access they need — read-only for collectors, comment-only for external reviewers, full edit for your core team.
Smart Annotations
Comment on any research item — not just adding notes, but linking your annotation to specific arguments in your essay. Build a live web of evidence for your curatorial thesis.
The fundamentals
One workspace for
the whole show.
The basics are built in, so nothing needs a second app: your artworks and people as a real database, documents and spreadsheets with writing tools included, and real-time collaboration — in any browser, with nothing to install.
Artwork & people database
Structured catalogue records for the works and the people around them — artists, lenders, writers — that your documents draw from.
Documents with writing tools
A real document editor with templates and live collaboration, the writing coach built in, and bulk upload for whole archives.
Built-in spreadsheets
Budgets, checklists and object lists, with templates — right beside the research they refer to.
Any device, any browser
The same workspace on phone, tablet and desktop. Nothing to install.
Sharing & permissions
Read-only for collectors, comment for reviewers, edit for your core team — per project, with team workspaces.
Approvals & oversight
A queue of what’s awaiting approval, who changed what, and the comment thread behind each decision.
A different approach to AI
Your keys, your costs,
your control.
Most AI tools charge a significant markup on the underlying model costs — often 10× or more. You pay for convenience, but lose transparency about what you're actually spending on AI.
Curatorial's Scholar and Team plans let you connect your own OpenAI, Anthropic, or Google API keys. You pay the providers directly at cost, with complete visibility into your token usage. We charge for the platform, not for being a middleman.
See pricingReady to curate
differently?
A workspace built around how curators actually work — research, voice, and the agreements that run a show, in one place.
Start free today