Episode 51: Franklin Sirmans

Miami is a harbinger of changing demographics in the United States, and we’re lucky to have as today’s guest Franklin Sirmans, director of Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), a modern and contemporary art museum dedicated to collecting and exhibiting international art of the 20th and 21st centuries. Our conversation ranges from PAMM’s navigation of the pandemic to the impact of Black Lives Matter on art museums, the need for staff and boards to reflect a museum’s community, the representation of indigenous people in museum programming, reservations about deaccessioning as a path to diversifying collections, the shifting priorities of collection-building versus offering temporary experiences, and the stereotype of Miami and L.A. as sybaritic settings for culture.