Terry
Adkins
(1953-2014)
Play Heavy
1993
metal, hoses, rubber tires
29 x 24 x 22 inches
Exhibited: Recital: Tang Teaching Museum, 2012. The exhibition traveled to the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, from January 1 through March 24, 2013.
Influence and Inspiration
Terry Adkins (1953-2014) was an interdisciplinary artist whose work wove together sculpture, sound, performance, printmaking, and archival research. Born in Washington, D.C., into a musical household, Adkins studied printmaking at Fisk University and Illinois State, then sculpture at University of Kentucky. Through his artistic life he explored the lives of both well-known and obscure figures in African American history, including W.E.B. Du Bois, John Coltrane, Matthew Henson, John Brown, creating “recitals” in which objects, instruments, sound, and installation converge. Central to his practice was a method he termed potential disclosure, in which found and archival materials are collected, allowed to gestate, and then transformed, often becoming activated through performance or sound, so that their dormant spirits can speak. His work challenges silence, elevates absence, and offers the viewer a space in which memory, sound, history, and materiality are inseparable.
Terry Adkins. Photo by Paula Court. Courtesy of Performa
Bomb Magazine, March 25, 2015
Selected Solo
Exhibitions
New Ghosts; Wise Art Gallery, Norfolk State University, VA, 1980
Call/Response; Anderson Gallery, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, 1990
Parameters; Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA, 1993
Visionary Recital; Hammonds House Museum, Atlanta, GA, 1995
After Flame; Mary Schiller Meyers School of Art, University of Akron, Akron, OH; Traveled to Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL; I-space, Chicago, IL; Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, IN; John Brown House, Summit County Historical Society, Akron, OH; Hand Workshop Art Center, Richmond, VA, 1998
Black Beethoven; Pageant Soloveev, Philadelphia; Traveled to Wheaton College, Norton, Massachusetts; Bronx River Art Center, NY, 2004
Terry Adkins: Infinity Is Always Less Than One; Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, FL, 2018
Terry Adkins: Our Sons and Daughters Ever on the Altar; Fisk University Galleries, Nashville, TN, 2020
Terry Adkins: Resounding, Pulitzer Arts Foundation, St. Louis, MO 2020-21
Paula Cooper Gallery, NY, 2022
Terry Adkins: Flumen Orationis (from The Principalities); Charlotte & Philip Hanes Art Gallery, Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC, 2023
Terry Adkins, Disclosure; Thomas Dane Gallery, London, UK, 2024
Selected Group
Exhibitions
Dimensions & Directions; Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson, MS, 1980
Juss’ Jazz; Kenkeleba House, NY, 1983
Pillar to Post; Kenkeleba House, NY, 1989
The Blues Aesthetic; Washington Project for the Arts, Washington, DC, 1990
Cadences: Icon and Abstraction in Context; New Museum, New York, NY, 1991
Southern Black Aesthetic; Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Winston-Salem, NC, 1992
Required Nuance; Studio Museum in Harlem, NY, 1995
Seeing Jazz; International Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, 1997
Red, Green, Black; Studio Museum in Harlem, NY, 2001
Radical Presence: Black Performance in Contemporary Art; Brown Foundation Gallery, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Houston, Texas; traveled to Grey Art Gallery, New York University, New York, NY; Studio Museum, Harlem, NY; and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN
The Freedom Principle: Experiments in Art and Music, 1965 to Now; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago, IL, 2015
The Dirty South; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA; traveled to Contemporary Art Museum, Houston, TX; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AK; Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver, CO, 2021
Edges of Ailey; Whitney Museum, New York, NY, 2024
Impossible Music; Tufts University Art Galleries, Medford, MA, 2025