Franklin Sirmans

Franklin Sirmans is the Terri and Michael Smooke Department Head and Curator of Contemporary Art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He was until recently the Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at The Menil Collection in Houston, where he organized several exhibitions including NeoHooDoo: Art for a Forgotten Faith, which traveled to PS 1 in New York and Miami Art Museum. He was the 2007 recipient of the David C. Driskell Prize awarded by the High Museum of Art, Atlanta and in 2009 was an inaugural honoree of the Gold Rush Awards by Rush Philanthropic Art’s Foundation. Sirmans has written essays for several exhibition catalogue's and articles and reviews in publications such as The New York Times, Time Out New York, Essence, and Grand Street. He is the co-curator of the exhibition Steve Wolfe: On Paper, 2009, (The Menil Collection and the Whitney Museum of American Art, Yale).