Sotheby's Charles Moffett on left, Seattle Art Museum curator Chiyo Ishikawa on right, in video still from "Conversations with Sotheby's"

Sotheby’s has launched a new video series, Conversations with Sotheby’s, and the debut interview features a seven-minute chat between Sotheby’s vice chairman Charles Moffett and Chiyo Ishikawa, curator of European painting and sculpture at the seriously cash-strapped Seattle Art Museum. (Read here about museum’s recent money woes).

Ishikawa and Moffett, who was director of the Phillips Collection prior to his auction gig, discuss Seattle’s upcoming Picasso loan show, drawn from the Picasso Museum in Paris. Click here to watch the video.

Coming on the heels of Sotheby’s announcement of a retail-style selling exhibition organized by Sotheby’s chairwoman Lisa Dennison — another former museum official — this further blurs the once inviolate borders between the commercial and non-profit sectors of the art world.

One wonders where all this is headed.  Are these scenarios any more or less squeamish because they involve former museum officials transplanted to the auction realm?