LA's largest museum hires new contemporary art chief

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art announced it’s hired a rising 40-year-old curator to head the museum’s growing contemporary art department. KPCC’s Adolfo Guzman-Lopez has more on the first African-American to reach that level at the museum.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez: Franklin Sirmans has worked as a curator in the New York area, edited an art magazine in Italy, and curated contemporary art at a private Houston museum. He says he’s leaving that job because LACMA, under director Michael Govan, has become a big player in a strong contemporary art city.

Franklin Sirmans: LACMA is, it’s really fresh right now. You got really unique vision from Michael and an incredible curatorial staff, great people, great city.

Guzman-Lopez: Sirman admires the work of the late New York painter Jean Michel Basquiat and the witty installations of Italian Maurizio Cattelan.

He has his work cut out for him. LACMA’s sandwiched between two major contemporary art museums. To the east, the Museum of Contemporary Art in downtown L.A., while in financial trouble, is home to a world renowned 5,000 piece collection. To the west, the Hammer Museum at UCLA exhibits the newest trends in art and regularly hosts art lectures with standing-room-only audiences.