Terry Adkins

Terry Roger Adkins (May 9, 1953 – February 8, 2014) was an American artist.^[1][2] He was Professor of Fine Arts in the School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania.^[3] He was born in Washington, D.C.

He graduated from Fisk University with a B.S., from Illinois State University with a M.S., and from the University of Kentucky with an M.F.A. He led the Lone Wolf Recital Corps that premiered works at ICA London, Rote Fabrik, Zurich, New World Symphony, Miami, P.S.1 MOMA, and ICA Philadelphia.^[4]

Adkins died of heart failure in Brooklyn, New York, in February 2014; he was 60 years old.^[5]

Life

Terry Roger Adkins was born in Washington on May 9, 1953, into a musical household. His father, Robert, a teacher, sang and played the organ; his mother, Doris Jackson, a nurse, was an amateur clarinetist and pianist.

As a young man, Adkins planned to be a musician, but in college he found himself drawn increasingly to visual art. He earned a B.S. in printmaking from Fisk University in Nashville, followed by an M.S. in the field from Illinois State University and an M.F.A. in sculpture from the University of Kentucky.^[6]

Terry Adkins was an interdisciplinary artist whose practice included sculpture, performance, video, and photography.^[7][8] His artworks were often inspired by, dedicated to, or referred to musicians or musical instruments; specific installations and exhibitions were sometimes labeled "recitals."^[9][10][7] Sometimes, these arrangements of sculptures were "activated" in performances by Adkins' collaborative performance group, the Lone Wolf Recital Corps.

Many of his works draw from the biographies of little known historical figures; his 2011 exhibition Nutjuitok (Polar Star) is based on the life of a black Arctic explorer named Matthew Henson who reached the North Pole with Robert Peary at the turn of the 20th century. In other cases, Adkins' works focus on obscure details in the lives of seminal figures such as the African American writer, activist and sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois, whose famous speech "Socialism and the American Negro" (1960) is invoked in the 2003-2008 installation Darkwater Record.

Awards

• 2009 Rome Prize ^[11][12]
• 2008 USA Fellows ^[13]

Exhibitions

• 2015 Venice Bienniale, Venice ^[14]
• 2014 Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum, New York ^[7]
• 2012 The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York^[15]
• 2009 Gallery of the American Academy, American Academy in Rome, Italy^[16]
• 2006 Gallery 51 ^[17]
• 1999 Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania ^[18][19]
• 1997 International Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
• 1995 Whitney Museum of American Art at Philip Morris, New York
• 1987 Salama-Caro Gallery, London
• 1986 Project Binz 39, Zurich

References

External links

• "Terry Adkins", Dana Roc
• "Terry Adkins", Artnet
• "At the AAR Gallery, Meteor Stream: Recital in Four Dominions", by Terry Adkins After John Brown
• Public artwork at the Harlem - 125 Street train station, commissioned by MTA Arts for Transit
• "Terry Adkins, Oral history", Bomb