Franklin Sirmans

Franklin Sirmans (born in New York City (Queens)) is an American art critic, editor, writer, curator since October 2015. His initiatives there include ensuring that PAMM's art program reflects the community in Miami and securing donations. In his first six months at PAMM, he managed to secure the largest donation of works in the museum's short history, over a hundred pieces of art were donated by Design District developer Craig Robins.

Early years Sirmans was born in New York City, Queens and raised in Harlem, Albany and New Rochelle, New York. He curated annual exhibitions for Los Angeles (1999), Atlanta (2003) and Baltimore (2005) as well as the shows Americas Remixed in Milan, Italy; Mass Appeal in Ottawa, Montreal, Halifax and Sackville, Canada From 2001 until 2003 he curated One Planet Under A Groove: Contemporary Art and Hip Hop at the Bronx Museum of Art; the Spelman College Art Gallery, Atlanta; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis and the Villa Stuck in Munich, Germany.

In 2004, he curated the show Ralph Bunche: Diplomat for Peace and Justice at the Queens Museum of Art. From 2005 until 2006 he was co-curator of Basquiat, which traveled from the Brooklyn Museum to the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art and then to the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston.

There he curated NeoHooDoo: Art for a Forgotten Faith, Steve Wolfe: Works on Paper and Vija Celmins: Television and Disaster, 1964–1966.

In 2010, he moved to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) as department head and curator of contemporary art where he remained until the fall of 2015. Fútbol: The Beautiful Game (2014),

In 2019 he was selected as curate to a special section of Frieze New York, which shows artists from Just Above Midtown (JAM), the 1970s-80s Black Power Gallery.

Other roles Sirmans was an instructor at the Maryland Institute College of Art and Princeton University.

He was the 2005 Maryland Art Place Critic-in-Residence A Mythical Metropolis Materializes in Queens (May 20, 2001) The No-Tech Way Toward Art-Making (September 2, 2001) Mapping a New, and Urgent, History of the World (December 9, 2001) Vija Celmins: Television and Disaster, 1964–1966 (January 31, 2011) Edward Kienholz, All – American Yawp (March 2012) L.A.’s Best, 2013—Franklin Sirmans (December 18, 2013) Basquiat and the Bayou (October 25, 2014) Prospect.3: Notes for Now (November 11, 2014) Sterling Ruby (Phaidon Contemporary Artists Series) (October 10, 2016); contributor