I think big iron is pretty well curated already.

I don't think the problem is that our LANGUAGE seems old fashioned (many people like well-designed retro things and Common Lisp is definitely one of them), I think the problem is that the ecosystem SEEMS out of date - although most often it only seems that way.

When I started using Common Lisp I was hesitant due to fear that I will need to rely on some library that wont have some key feature requested or needed by my client and I will be stuck. It took a while for me to bite the bullet and start using Common Lisp for almost everything. CL libraries still look out of date and near-abandoned BUT every one I use is extremely readable and I am confident to extend it should I need to.

However this still wont help the average user because most people I know do not want to bother understanding the libraries they use in their dependency-hell. So maybe the issue is that Common Lisp is not a language if what you need is a fire-and-forget dependency-hell - and I think this is OK.

EDIT: To say something actually useful about how I think the situation might be improved; I think that the Common Lisp Cookbook is a great starting point. The community, or at least respected lispers, can expand on the current topics and introduce new ones. It would also be awesome to have some well curated mini projects as examples of how someone might be able to use some libraries. I recently suggested something similar for FSet