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Derrick Adams, Sing It Like You Mean It, 2016, installation view, High Line, New York © Derrick Adams Studio. Photo: courtesy High Line, New York

Public Installation

Derrick Adams
Moynihan Connector Billboard

January 11–April 22, 2024
High Line, New York
www.thehighline.org

Sitting Pretty and Sing It Like You Mean It (both 2016) by Derrick Adams are on view on the High Line’s Moynihan Connector Billboard at its location on Dyer Avenue between 30th and 31st Streets in New York. The double-sided billboard features Adams’s two commanding depictions of Black people, whose warm self-assurance is broadcast to the park visitors and passersby below. The figures on each side are set against the Technicolor backdrop of a television test card, suggesting the partial reset of conventions within popular culture that took place as Black culture gained greater representation in the latter part of the twentieth century. A public park built on a once-abandoned elevated rail line in Manhattan, the High Line is also a nonprofit organization that works with communities and reimagines public spaces to create connected, healthy neighborhoods and cities.

Derrick Adams, Sing It Like You Mean It, 2016, installation view, High Line, New York © Derrick Adams Studio. Photo: courtesy High Line, New York

Derrick Adams, Dewdrop Inn, 2023 © Derrick Adams Studio. Photo: Maximilian Franz

Installation

Derrick Adams
Dewdrop Inn

December 3, 2023–Fall 2026
Baltimore Museum of Art
artbma.org

Derrick Adams’s Dewdrop Inn (2023) has been installed at the Baltimore Museum of Art as part of the reopening of the Patricia and Mark Joseph Education Center, which offers new opportunities for hands-on art making and engagement for families, students, and art lovers of all ages. The installation, which features a match-up card game designed by the artist, invites young museumgoers to interact with one another and learn about the museum’s rich collection of African American art.

Derrick Adams, Dewdrop Inn, 2023 © Derrick Adams Studio. Photo: Maximilian Franz

Derrick Adams takeover at the Gagosian Shop, London, 2023. Artwork © Derrick Adams Studio. Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd

Shop Takeover

Derrick Adams
RECESS

Opening reception: Tuesday, October 10, 6–8pm
October 2–November 6, 2023
Gagosian Shop, London

Derrick Adams is taking over the Gagosian Shop in London’s Burlington Arcade with RECESS, a presentation of new work accompanied by the installation of his interactive sculptures Funtime Unicorn Spring Riders (2022) along the length of the arcade. Embodying the themes of play and leisure that are at the center of Adams’s practice, they may be ridden, transforming the historic space through an invitation to engage.

The Funtime Unicorn Spring Riders reimagine a motif first developed by Adams in the Floater series (2016–21) of paintings depicting Black people at leisure. A presentation of related works in the Gagosian Shop includes a new painting of a child playing on a Funtime Unicorn and the video Funtime Unicorn: Ruby Rides through Four Seasons (2023), an animation realized in collaboration with the graphic design studio the Channel and narrated by Aya Burns and Cleo Reed with music by Dave Guy of the Roots. An affirmation of childhood wonder and creativity, the video relates the imagined passage of a year experienced by a unicorn in an urban playground and across cosmic dreamscapes. The Shop will feature new merchandise designed by Adams with imagery of recreation, self-reflection, and sweet treats.

Derrick Adams takeover at the Gagosian Shop, London, 2023. Artwork © Derrick Adams Studio. Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd

Derrick Adams, America’s Playground: DC, 2023 © Derrick Adams Studio

Exhibition

Derrick Adams in
Beyond Granite: Pulling Together

August 18–September 18, 2023
National Mall, Washington, DC
monumentlab.com

Beyond Granite: Pulling Together aims to create a more inclusive, equitable, and representative commemorative landscape on the National Mall. Curated by Monument Lab, a nonprofit public art and history studio based in Philadelphia, the exhibition features installations by six artists that respond to its central question: What stories remain untold on the National Mall? The innovative and experimental works explore Indigenous legacies, histories of enslavement, civil rights, LGBTQ activism, pathways for immigration, environmental justice, and other defining narratives of American resilience. America’s Playground: DC (2023), a monumental structure by Derrick Adams that considers the history of desegregated playgrounds in the nation’s capital, is included.

Derrick Adams, America’s Playground: DC, 2023 © Derrick Adams Studio

Takashi Murakami, Gargantua on Your Palm, 2018 © 2018 Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All rights reserved

Fundraiser

Artist Plate Project 2022
Coalition for the Homeless

Launching May 22, 2023, 10am edt

Limited-edition bone china plates produced by Prospect and featuring artwork by more than forty artists—including Virgil Abloh, Derrick Adams, Harold Ancart, Georg Baselitz, Amoako Boafo, Mark Grotjahn, Takashi Murakami, Albert Oehlen, Ed Ruscha, Anna Weyant, and Jonas Wood—will be sold through Artware Editions to raise funds for the Coalition’s lifesaving programs. The funds raised by the sale of the plates will provide food, crisis services, housing, and other critical aid to thousands of people experiencing homelessness and instability. The purchase of one plate can feed one hundred homeless and hungry New Yorkers.

Takashi Murakami, Gargantua on Your Palm, 2018 © 2018 Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All rights reserved

Derrick Adam’s Funtime Unicorn: Ruby Rides Through Four Seasons (2023) on the façade of the Mart, Chicago. Artwork © Derrick Adams. Photo: courtesy Art on the Mart

Public Installation

Derrick Adams
Art on the Mart

April 14–July 5, 2023, 8:30pm daily
The Mart, Chicago
artonthemart.com 

Art on the Mart, an innovative digital art project that transforms the Chicago architectural landmark into a larger-than-life canvas, will initiate its 2023 programming with a new work by Derrick Adams. Titled Funtime Unicorn: Ruby Rides Through Four Seasons (2023), the animation builds upon Adams’s whimsical Funtime Unicorn project, which celebrates Black joy, love, and play. Featuring a display of colorful backgrounds and light tunnels across the façade of the Mart, the ten-minute piece will be on view each night at 8:30pm for one hour. Realized in collaboration with the graphic design studio the Channel, the work features an original score, background vocals, and story narration by Cleo Reed, alongside original music by trumpeter Dave Guy of the Roots.

Derrick Adam’s Funtime Unicorn: Ruby Rides Through Four Seasons (2023) on the façade of the Mart, Chicago. Artwork © Derrick Adams. Photo: courtesy Art on the Mart

Derrick Adams standing in his installation The City Is My Refuge (2023) at New York’s Penn Station. Artwork © Derrick Adams Studio

Commission

Derrick Adams
Art at Amtrak – New York Penn Station

Amtrak has commissioned Derrick Adams to create an expansive new work for Art at Amtrak, a program that invites artists from New York and New Jersey to produce original art specifically for Penn Station in New York City. The installation, titled The City Is My Refuge (2023), which marks the first time that a single artist has taken over the entire concourse level of the station, is on view from January 19 through June 2023. Adams, a frequent rider of Amtrak between New York and Baltimore, created the installation to highlight the wonders of the urban environment available to residents and visitors alike. He reframes the city as a place where the natural world shares space with humanity, and as somewhere one can find peace and joy. 

Derrick Adams standing in his installation The City Is My Refuge (2023) at New York’s Penn Station. Artwork © Derrick Adams Studio

Derrick Adams, Our Time Together, 2021, installation view, Milwaukee Art Museum © Derrick Adams Studio

Commission

On Site: Derrick Adams
Our Time Together

On Site: Derrick Adams features a multimedia wall mural and sculptural installation made specifically for the Milwaukee Art Museum’s East End, on view from October 29, 2021, through 2024. Inspired by Victor Hugo Green’s The Negro Motorist Green Book (1936–66), a travel guide for Black Americans during the Jim Crow era, Adams celebrates the rituals of everyday Black life and leisure. The monumental wall mural, titled Our Time Together (2021), includes references to Milwaukee institutions Gee’s Clippers, Coffee Makes You Black, and the Wisconsin Black Historical Society, as well as photographs from the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

Derrick Adams, Our Time Together, 2021, installation view, Milwaukee Art Museum © Derrick Adams Studio