FRANKLIN SIRMANS

Lecturer in the Council of the Humanities and Visual Arts

Campus Address: 185 Nassau Street, Room 221

Campus Phone: (609) 258-7796

Office Hours: M, 4:30-5:30 p.m.

fsirmans@princeton.edu

Franklin Sirmans is an independent curator, writer, editor and lecturer based in New York City. A former U.S. Editor of Flash Art and Editor-in-Chief of Art AsiaPacific magazines, Sirmans has written for several journals and newspapers on art and culture, including The New York Times, Newsweek International, Art in America, ArtNews, Grand Street and Essence Magazine.

He is cocurator of Basquiat (2005-2006: Brooklyn Museum, Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston). He was cocurator of Make It Now: New Sculpture in New York at Sculpture Center; One Planet Under A Groove: Contemporary Art and Hip Hop (2001-2003: Bronx Museum of Art, Spelman College Art Gallery, Atlanta, the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis and Villa Stuck, Munich, Germany); and Ralph Bunche: Diplomat for Peace and Justice at the Queens Museum of Art (2004). He has also curated several other exhibitions including Americas Remixed in Milan, Italy; Mass Appeal in Ottawa, Montreal, Halifax and Sackville, Canada; and annual exhibitions for Atlanta (2003), Baltimore (2005) and Los Angeles (1999). Sirmans has also organized several exhibitions for commercial galleries including A Moments Notice in Houston, Things Fall Apart in Chicago, Notorious Impropriety in Boston, Color Theory in Torino, and New Video in Seoul; and New Wave, The Color of Sound, Summer Jam, Retroactive I and Rumors of War in New York.

Sirmans has edited numerous catalogues on contemporary art including Transforming the Crown: African, Asian and Caribbean Artists in Britain, (University of Chicago Press), Jean-Michel Basquiat (Tony Shafrazi Gallery), Freestyle and Black Belt at The Studio Museum in Harlem, and contributed to Gary Simmons at the MCA, Chicago and Double Consciousness: Black Conceptual Art Since 1970 (Contemporary Art Museum, Houston), in addition to several monographs on artists including Edgar Arceneaux, Monika Bravo, Iona Brown, Mia Enell, Manuel Esnoz, Charles Gaines, Kojo Griffin, Dario Robleto and Kehinde Wiley.

Sirmans was the 2005 Maryland Art Place Critic-in-Residence and an instructor at the Maryland Institute College of Art and Princeton University.

Born in New York City (Queens), Sirmans was raised in Harlem, Albany and New Rochelle, New York. He attended Manhattan Country School, Albany Academy and New Rochelle High School before receiving a B.A. in Art History and English from Wesleyan University (1991).

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