First African-American curator at LA County Museum of Art

There’s a new contemporary art chief at the Southland’s largest art museum. In January, 40-year-old Franklin Sirmans becomes the head of that department at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. KPCC’s Adolfo Guzman-Lopez talked with the first African-American to reach that level of management at the museum.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez: Franklin Sirmans grew up in New York City.

Franklin Sirmans: My father kinda had artists around, he collected a little bit, he was a doctor – he was very good friend with several artists, so I was around artists at a very early age, and that had a profound effect later on.

Guzman-Lopez: He fell in love with the passionate discussion of ideas. Sirmans says he knew the art world was for him after seeing superstar painter Jean Michel Basquiat plastered on the cover of a 1985 issue of the New York Times Magazine.

Sirmans: It’s a crazy picture where he’s got this fly Armani suit on and he has no shoes on and he’s kind of totally playing with people’s perceptions and ideas of a young black artist.

Guzman-Lopez: Sirmans worked as a curator in several New York-area museums and edited an art magazine in Italy. These days he heads the contemporary art section of a private museum in Houston.

He’s very familiar with current African-American art. But he says his new job at LACMA won’t make him a cheerleader for any one cohort of artists.

He says that one of his main jobs will be to help the museum do more with less.

Sirmans: It’s expensive shipping work all around the world. I think there are a lot of things we can do at the museum that are fresh, exciting, and new."

Guzman-Lopez: That includes staging more performances and allowing artists to tap into LACMA’s 100,000 piece collection of ancient to contemporary art. Franklin Sirmans says he didn’t appreciate the outdoors during his childhood in New York, so he looks forward to enjoying it year-round in L.A. He’s an avid golfer who’s never played a local course during his visits here. What’s his score?

Sirmans: We’re going somewhere between a nasty 92 in Vegas not so long ago and probably like an 84.

Guzman-Lopez: Jackson Pollock talk between putts? Not a bad combination.