Rachel Adams is the Chief Curator and Director of Programs at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts. Past curatorial appointments include Senior Curator at UB Art Galleries, Curator-in-Residence at Disjecta Contemporary Art Center and Associate Curator at Arthouse at the Jones Center (now The Contemporary Austin). Adams holds an MA in Exhibition and Museum Studies from SFAI and a BFA from SAIC. Her areas of research are varied but include a focus on the crossover between contemporary art and architecture, performance and video and new media practices. Select exhibitions include All Together, Amongst Many: Reflections on Empathy, Paul Mpagi Sepuya: Drop Scene, Claudia Wieser: Generations (co-curated), Alison O’Daniel: Heavy Air, Jillian Mayer: TIMESHARE, The Language of Objects, Wanderlust: Actions, Traces, Journeys 1967-2017 and Introducing Tony Conrad: A Retrospective (co-curated). Forthcoming projects include exhibitions with Maya Dunietz in 2022 and in 2023, the painting exhibition Presence in the Pause.
She has worked with artists including Ekene Ijeoma, Amie Siegel, Ragnar Kjartansson, Lydia Okumura, Stephanie Syjuco, Claudia Wieser Kambui Olujimi, Jordan Weber, Brendan Fernandes, Seher Shah, John Grade, Claire Ashley, Julia Rose Sutherland, Seitu Ken Jones, and Alyssa Pheobus Mumtaz. Her writing has been included in exhibition catalogues Claudia Wieser: Generations; Jillian Mayer: TIMESHARE, Introducing Tony Conrad: A Retrospective, Out of Easy Reach, Prospect.3 New Orleans, and Texas Prize 2012 as well as Afterimage, artforum.com, Art Papers, Art Practical, Modern Painters, and Texas Architect. She is an alumnus of the 2016 ICI Curatorial Intensive in New Orleans and the 2016 Artis Curatorial Research Trip to Israel. She has lectured at the University at Buffalo, MOCAD, The Rose Art Museum, Hallwalls Center for Contemporary Art, PNCA, FIT, the University of Nebraska Omaha, the Stephens Institute, Texas State University, the University of Texas at Austin, and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
