Franklin Sirmans

5 PM Exhibition Opens — John Akomfrah: Precarity
5:30-6:30 PM Cash Bar and Live Performance: Art of Cool All-Star Band, led by Al Strong
7 PM The Directors Series continues with Franklin Sirmans, who will give a talk about “Miami’s Art Museum, the Pérez Art Museum Miami.” Since he became director of PAMM in fall 2015, Sirmans has implemented a distinct approach, mixing scholarship and education and building upon the museum’s history since its origins in 1984. Sirmans will discuss new initiatives while highlighting recent exhibitions and what makes for an exciting time to consider contemporary art in one of the country’s most international cities.

Before he arrived at PAMM, Sirmans was department head and curator of contemporary art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art for nearly six years. He came to Los Angeles from Houston, where he was curator of modern and contemporary art at the Menil Collection. Previously, he worked as an independent curator, co-curating Basquiat (2005) at the Brooklyn Museum and One Planet Under a Groove: Hip-Hop and Contemporary Art (2002) at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, among many others. In 2014, he served as artistic director of Prospect.3, the city-wide triennial in New Orleans. Franklin was born in Queens and raised in Harlem, Albany and New Rochelle, New York. He earned a bachelor’s degree in art history and English at Wesleyan University. Free and open to all.