Interview with Franklin Sirmans

This interview was conducted on April 18, 2007, in the office of Franklin Sirmans at the Menil Collection in Houston, Texas.

ROWELL: How did you, who grew up as a middle-class Harlem resident—of Lenox Terrace, let me add—find you your way here to Houston, Texas? I probably should first ask this: How did you find your way to visual art, an expressive art form that is not commonly known in American homes. I am talking about the kind of visual art that is revered in museums and galleries. How did you come to this kind of visual art?

SIRMANS: My parents are strivers. They had dreams beyond their lived experiences to that point. Sure, Lenox Terrace has a lot of middle class folks, but they are all working people—even if Charlie Rangel gives us a bad name, or a different name. I don’t know. Posters on my wall were my art, mainly sports posters; my father was interested at some point, but I’m not sure what sparked his interest. We used to go to places like Peg Alsten, June Kelly, and later, Just Above Midtown, which was Linda Good Bryant’s amazing gallery that blew everything out of the water, with David Hammonds, Senga Nengudi, Lorraine O’Grady, Adrian Piper, the list just goes on, it was an amazing thing. There was that going on and I was fortunate enough to get a little bit of a taste of it then. I know when you were here you saw the Sam Gilliam show that Valerie brought to the Contemporary Arts Museum; I can remember meeting him very early, and my father had one work by him. So it was something that was around that I benefited from, and I’m grateful for that.

ROWELL: When you first entered the university, did you intend to major in visual art? Its practice or its history, for example?

SIRMANS: I declared probably sophomore year, in art history and English, so it was just as much writing about literature as it was writing about art.

ROWELL: Where did you study? Did your study at that time help to prepare you to become the curator that you are now?

SIRMANS: At Wesleyan University in Connecticut. I also have to mention that I grew up 10 blocks from the Studio Museum, so it was right there, and right across the street from the Schomburg, so art was definitely around. It has all helped in some way.

ROWELL: Your work suggests that you still have a serious interest in creative literature.

SIRMANS: Yes, absolutely. That was really my initial interest, as for so many people who have written about art, poetry, short stories, etc. . . . My first published pieces were books and music reviews. I spent a semester at Morehouse, where I got to work with Mari Evans; that was incredible. I was also at Wesleyan when Hazel Carby was leaving, but Robert O’Meally was an important part of the school and people in art who published and taught like John Paoletti, Robert O’Meally, and my advisor Dr. Peter Mark. I also remember going to Yale to hear R. F. Thompson.

ROWELL: What was your trajectory after Wesleyan?

SIRMANS: First, I worked at Shearson Lehman doing lame office work for commodities trading. I had to make some money and get my own place, which was a dump on 109^th Street near Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue. Then I worked as an intern at Studio Museum, and after that I went to Paris for a few months and did an exhibition with Gary Simmons. I came back and got a job at Thea Westreich Art Advisory Services, then at Dia Center for the Arts, which by the way was co-founded by one of the daughters of Dominique de Menil. I was there from ’93 to ’96 as a publications assistant, and worked with a really incredible team of people including the curator, Lynne Cooke, who is still there, and the publications head, Karen Kelly, with whom I’ve worked since. That was a truly formative experience. We wrote books about...