Derrick Adams
1970– · American visual and performance artist, curator and professor
Derrick Adams (Baltimore, 1970) is an American visual and performance artist, as well as a curator and fine art professor. His work centers on Black identity and African American culture, with particular attention to what critics have called "Black Joy." He studied at the Pratt Institute and earned an MFA from Columbia University, completing it in 2003. He teaches at the Maryland Institute College of Art and is represented by Gagosian Gallery.
After briefly teaching elementary school, his career developed through institutional exhibitions. In 2016 he presented an installation at the Aljira Center for Contemporary Art in Newark, featuring a large pyramid enclosing a broadcasting radio station, and that same year Pioneer Works hosted ON, a show of collages, sculptures and lampshades evoking characters from In Living Color and The Matrix. In 2017 he worked with the archive of the Stony Island Arts Bank for Future People, and in 2018 the Museum of Arts and Design showed Sanctuary, inspired by The Negro Motorist Green Book.
His language combines collage, patterns and references to popular culture, with a steady interest in racial identity. His work has also reached television, appearing in the series Empire, and public spaces, including a glass artwork for the Nostrand Avenue station in New York and an interactive playground on the National Mall in Washington. In 2026 ICA Boston presents View Master, his first mid-career museum survey.