17 Facts About Terry Adkins

Terry Adkins was Professor of Fine Arts in the School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania.

Terry Adkins's father, Robert H Adkins, a chemistry and science teacher and Korean War veteran, sang and played the organ; his mother, Doris Jackson, a nurse, was an amateur clarinetist and pianist.

Terry Adkins' grandfather was the Rev Andrew Terry Adkins, pastor of the historic Alfred Street Baptist Church in Alexandria, Virginia.

Terry Adkins's aunt Alexandra Alexander was a mathematician and NSA code breaker.

Terry Adkins was an interdisciplinary artist whose practice included sculpture, performance, video, and photography.

Terry Adkins' work has been exhibited at museums and galleries worldwide, including the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and is in the collections of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden; the Studio Museum in Harlem; the Perez Art Museum Miami, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York; and the Tate Modern in London.

Early on, Terry Adkins's art went international with work featured at Project Binz 39 in Zurich in 1986, and at Salama-Caro Gallery in London in 1987.

In 1995 Terry Adkins showed work at the Whitney Museum of American Art at Philip Morris in New York, and in 1997 at the International Gallery at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC Terry Adkins had a show in 1999 at the Institute of Contemporary Art at University of Pennsylvania.

Terry Adkins went international again in 2009, displaying work in Gallery of the American Academy at American Academy in Rome, Italy.

Terry Adkins's art was included in the 2014 Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum in New York City, the same year his solo show "Nenuphar" opened at Salon 94 gallery.

In 2023, Terry Adkins' work was included in the exhibition and related catalogue of Spirit in the Land, a show looking into human interconnection with natural worlds and ecologies organized by the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, in Durham.

The art exhibition "Nenuphar," features various sculptures and mixed media artworks by Terry Adkins, held at the Salon 94 gallery, located in New York City, in 2014.

In each of various locations across the United States connected with Brown's life, Terry Adkins collaborated with members of the local community and merged newly discovered objects into the installations.

Terry Adkins died of heart failure in Brooklyn, New York, in February 2014; he was 60 years old.

Terry Adkins was married to Merele Williams and had a son, Titus Hamilton Adkins, and a daughter, Turiya Hamlet Adkins.

At the University of Pennsylvania, Terry Adkins was a teacher and mentor to numerous contemporary visual artists including Sandford Biggers, Demetrius Oliver, Nsenga Knight, Jamal Cyrus, and Jacolby Satterwhite.

Terry Adkins's work was memorialized by George Lewis in his work A Recital for Terry Adkins in 2016, performed by Ensemble Pamplemousse.