Contemporaries enjoys a private tour with the Derrick Adams
Derrick Adams: Sanctuary
Lead by Guest Curator Dexter Wimberly
At the Museum of Arts and Design
Derrick Adams: Sanctuary consists of 50 works of mixed-media collage, assemblage on wood panels, and sculpture presented in an installation designed by the artist that reimagine safe destinations for the black American traveler during the mid-twentieth century. The body of work was inspired by The Negro Motorist Green Book, an annual guidebook for black American road-trippers published by New York postal worker Victor Hugo Green from 1936 to 1967, during the Jim Crow era in America. The exhibit reflects on the plight of working-class black people before and during the Civil Rights Movement, and their determination to pursue the same American Dream afforded to others.
The exhibit is guest curated by Dexter Wimberly, Executive Director of Aljira, a Center for Contemporary Art (Newark), with support from the Museum of Arts and Design’s Assistant Curator Samantha De Tillio.
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Derrick Adams Multidisciplinary Artist
Derrick Adams was born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1970. He received his MFA from Columbia University and BFA from Pratt Institute. He is an alumnus of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and Marie Walsh Sharpe Foundation’s Studio Program. Adams is a recipient of a Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Residency (2019), a Gordon Parks Foundation Fellowship (2018), a Studio Museum Joyce Alexander Wein Artist Prize (2016), and a Louis Comfort Tiffany Award (2009). Adams has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions, including Buoyant (2020) at the Hudson River Museum; Where I’m from (2019) at The Gallery in Baltimore City Hall; Sanctuary (2018) at the Museum of Arts and Design, New York; Transmission (2018) at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver; Network (2017) at the California African American Museum, Los Angeles; and The Channel (2012) at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Adams’ work has been presented in important public exhibitions, including Men of Change: Power. Triumph. Truth. (2019) a 10-city exhibition presented by the Smithsonian Institution; PERFORMA (2015, 2013, and 2005); The Shadows Took Shape (2014) and Radical Presence (2013–14) at The Studio Museum in Harlem; Greater New York (2005) at MoMA PS1; and Open House: Working In Brooklyn (2004) at the Brooklyn Museum. His work resides in the permanent collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Studio Museum in Harlem, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the Birmingham Museum of Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.