It depends who’s answering, Zemaitis says.

James Zemaitis: I think it’s funny in that there’s definitely a huge difference between how you explain design from a market perspective and how you would explain design as the curator at MOMA. In my world, design really is about beauty. It’s about how does this work fit in with my collection. How does this look next to everything else in my collection? It really has nothing to do with the old form versus function debate. Ornament can still be crime in the contemporary design movement, but the work itself is frequently an ornament. It’s not about a work having ornament applied to it. It’s about the work itself mimicking sculpture; mimicking contemporary art. And that is the fundamental basis of contemporary design in the market world. On the other side of the coin, if I was to become a full-on curator at an institution, I would be far more concerned with good design – that question, “What is good design, and form and function?” And thus one of my heroes . . . One of my personal heroes over the last 20 years in terms of who is the most innovative, smartest designer of our times, to which I would say Jasper Morrison . . . You know Morrison is not much of a presence in the market because everything he does is so minimalist and so oriented towards function – making this piece work with as few steps as possible.

Recorded on: 1/30/08