Petrucci Family Foundation Collection of African American Art

Bringing focus to African-American art and its essential place in the history of American art.

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Derrick Adams

1970–Present

Works in the Collection

Head Study (Figure Plate No. 5)
2011

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Biography

Derrick Adams was born in Baltimore in 1970. He received his BFA from Pratt Institute in 1996 and his MFA from Columbia University in 2003. Adams’ work spans painting, collage, sculpture, performance, video, and sound installations. His multidisciplinary practice engages the ways in which individuals’ ideals, aspirations, and personae become attached to specific objects, colors, textures, symbols, and ideologies. His work probes the influence of popular culture on the formation of self-image, and the relationship between man and monument as they coexist and embody one another. Adams is also deeply immersed in questions of how African American experiences intersect with art history, American iconography, and consumerism.

Adams has been awarded residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, the Sharpe Walentas Studio Program, The Fountainhead Residency, and the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation. His work has been exhibited at the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Gordon Parks Foundation, Jack Tilton Gallery, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Baltimore City Hall, and many more. Adams’ work can also be found in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Studio Museum of Harlem, the Birmingham Museum of Art, and a number of private collections.

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