Prior to his appointment in Chicago, he served as the Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seattle Art Museum from 2006-2010. While there, he organized distinguished exhibitions, including Gaylen Hansen, Three Decades of Painting (2007-08), Su-Mei Tse (2008), Dennis Oppenheim: Safety Cones (2008), and Target Practice: Painting Under Attack 1949-78 (2009). Darling also served as an assistant curator at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art beginning in 1998, where he organized Superflat, in collaboration with the artist Takashi Murakami (2001); Seattle artist/architect Roy McMakin’s first museum survey (2002); and Painting in Tongues, a survey of single artists whose practices span many mediums (2006). Darling received his Ph.D. from University of California, Santa Barbara, on the furniture of 20th-century American designer George Nelson.
