In that regard, the Swiss-born Mr. Obrist, 48 — who never formally studied art history — is hard to beat. Legendary for the insomniac relentlessness of his globe-trotting schedule, he travels to visit artists and museums 52 weekends of the year and is the co-founder of the Brutally Early Club, a discussion group that periodically convenes in cities such as London, New York and Paris at 6.30 am. Mr. Obrist is a curator of artists’ “thoughts and intentions” more than what they “do and make,” though he is “an enabler” of that as well, the keepers of the list write. The British digital artist Ed Atkins (number 50 in the Power 100) was given a one-man show by him at the Serpentine in 2014.

In July, Mr. Obrist published his “Lives of the Artists, Lives of the Architects,” echoing Giorgio Vasari’s famous 1550 “Lives,” which the would-be curator read at the age of 17. Those same biographies underpin the threatened A-level History of Art syllabus studied by British 17 year-olds, who many view as choosing a “soft” option.

Mr. Obrist is becoming the Vasari of our digital age. His ongoing “Interview Project” on tumblr.com has over 2,000 hours of interviews with influential individuals across a range of cultural disciplines. He is the co-founder of 89plus.com, a research project that curates and promotes the work of more than 6,000 artists born in or after 1989. He has 147,000 followers on Instagram, where he systematically posts images of handwritten messages artists doodle at the end of interviews with him.

“Social media is an additional layer of research for me and it will never replace studio and exhibition visits,” Mr. Obrist said in an email. “Digital consumption only gives people a bigger desire than ever to engage with art in person.” Visitor numbers at the Serpentine Galleries, where he has been a director since 2006, increased last year to 995,335 from 912,746 in 2014.

Technological savviness and a multifaceted approach distinguish the highest climbers in this year’s Power 100. To be sure, there are the usual suspects of the commercial gallery scene, such as Iwan & Manuela Wirth (at 3), David Zwirner (4) and Larry Gagosian (6). But above them at number 2 is the politicized Polish curator Adam Szymczyk, the director of next year’s 14th quinquennial Documenta art exhibition, which for the first time will be held in Athens as well as its hometown Kassel in Germany.

Image Hans Ulrich Obrist, the artistic director of the Serpentine Galleries in London. Credit... Roe Ethridge

The most “powerful” artist, at number 7, is the Berlin-based Hito Steyerl, whose immersive video installation, “Factory of the Sun,” was on show from February to September at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles, having represented Germany at the previous year’s Venice Biennale.