As Art Basel kicks off this year in Miami Beach, Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) director Franklin Sirmans reflected on the last 10 years at the helm of the institution in an interview with the New York Times.
Though PAMM has remained steady, with the help of Sirmans’ leadership and the museum’s primary patron Jorge M. Pérez, many institutions have faced tremendous hardship and losses over the last decade.
“We have proved to be the people’s museum in Miami, in a place that has been much more well known for its private collections,” Sirmans told the Times.
“I’m proud that we’ve doubled the endowment,” he continued. “We’re about to triple it. But I’m also really proud about the way that it’s happened. Around 10 percent of the endowment right now has come through the Fund for Black Art. We decided not to just spend down money that was given by Jorge Pérez and the Knight Foundation. We turned it into an endowed fund and are only spending the proceeds of the interest.”
The fruits of his labor are evident in the expanded size of the collection to just above 3,500 works, as well as the museum’s expanded digital footprint on such platforms as PAMM TV (the streaming gallery for video art) and digitization of the collection.
However, Sirmans noted, “A year and a half ago, [the state of Florida] declared statewide zero funding for the arts. Which is sad.”
He was referencing the events of 2024, when Governor Ron DeSantis vetoed $32 million in funding to arts organizations across Florida. As the Times pointed out, a new budget did restore some, though not all, of that funding.
“We have much work to do, because people really have to know that arts are important across the board, to everyone,” Sirmans added in his Times interview. “I say let’s do what we have to do to make sure that other people feel the same way.”
