This article shares research, an empirical psychological case study, about cognition in higher degree art education. It proposes cognitive curation as a concept and practice that can develop knowledge and learning autonomy in and beyond the academy. Informed by the autoethnographic stories, interviews, and artworks of three academic art educators, this article's research demonstrates how cognition and its curation can manifest and develop in the teaching, research, and practice of higher degree art education. Open coding and framework alignment (cognitive, nexus orientated and visual) helped understand, locate, and exemplify cognition and curation in the research. Informed by the data, this article acknowledges how movement, identities, and frameworks, as learning strategies, can help facilitate cognition and cognitive curation. Cognitive curation provides means to responsibly form and follow learning, it is consequently relevant to the arts, education, and life. Art education's cognitive value is often questioned, this article dialogically contributes to the defense of its cognitive integrity whilst foregrounding cognitive curation.