Content curation is a crucial marketing strategy for Destination Marketing Organizations (DMOs). Today it is particularly relevant for social media platforms such as Instagram given their relevancy for destination marketing to shape tourists' perceptions and decision-making. To leverage photos on Instagram effectively, DMOs strategically incorporate user-generated photos on their official accounts. This study investigates the content curation strategies for user-generated photos for 50 U.S. state DMOs. Analyzing their Instagram accounts from January 2013 to December 2023, we find that these DMOs have increasingly adopted content curation strategies over time. DMOs conducting high curation intensity with high content alignment generate the most user engagement. This study contributes to tourism marketing literature on the adoption of user-generated content in the social media context. The findings also provide practical guidance for U.S. state DMOs in crafting their social media strategies.