In this post about art, commerce, the appointment of Jeffrey Deitch as LA MOCA's director, Seattle dealer Greg Kucera wondered whether now-Seattle Art Museum curator Michael Darling left MOCA for any reasons related to the recent hullabaloo. So I called Darling. His comments on the jump. (Short answer: no.)

What do you think about the Deitch hire?

That's a museum we are going to work with. I wouldn't want to be a public commentator on it, necessarily.

Okay, I'll pose questions and you can decide to answer or not answer. What did you think of Christopher Knight's description of MOCA as "mixing business with pleasure"?

I don't think I totally understood what he meant. I don't know if that totally gets at what this appointment means, but yeah, I don't know exactly what he's getting at with that one. It didn't seem like it nailed the issues.

Could you nail the issues?

I could but I don't really want to go on record saying anything about that.

Were any of MOCA's recent problems and controversies in evidence when you were there or a cause for your leaving the museum to come to Seattle?

No, none of those problems were really that evident when I left, and I only left because the Seattle job was as interesting and as full of potential as it was. I didn't leave there for any reasons of discontent and disappointment or anything like that, and it seemed at the time there that everything was all hunky-dory there in terms of management and finances, too.

How do you think the Murakami show helps illuminate questions about art and commerce?

I guess it's true that the kind of spectacle that the Murakami show represented, especially the blurring of the lines between art and commerce that happened with the Louis Vuitton shop, does seem to be in line with some of the things that Jeffrey Deitch likes to pursue in his projects, so I think that that's true.

How did you think the shop worked in that context?

I don't think MOCA would do a show that would have that degree of commercialization in it unless it was in the guise of working with somebody like Takashi Murakami, who actively tries to activate the discourse about those things. So to me it didn't compromise the curatorial or aesthetic integrity of that project, it was just taking it to the next logical step, and I thought it was a very bold and gutsy thing to try to do that, but to me it completely fits in with everything Murakami's been doing for the last fifteen years or so.

Some of these questions about art and commerce are as old as the hills. Are there any interesting new angles being introduced by this hire?

Not really. I mean, presuming that they can work out all of the, you know, in a transparent way, those conflicts, and Jeffrey can extricate himself from the commercial role, I think he's got all of the connections and the understanding of the art world to make a go of being a director, and he knows all the collectors that are the same people you would go to for fundraising and projects, so if they can sort out those other details, there shouldn't be a reason why he couldn't be a good director.