Adams, Henry 1949-

PERSONAL:

Born May 12, 1949, in Boston, MA; son of Thomas Boylston (a business executive and writer) and Ramelle Adams; married Marianne Berardi (a museum director), April 12, 1989. Education: Harvard University, B.A., 1971; Yale University, M.A., 1977, Ph.D., 1980.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Case Western Reserve University, Mather House, Rm. 103, 11201 Euclid Ave., Cleveland, OH 44106. E-mail—hxa28@case.edu; henry.adams@case.edu.

CAREER:

Writer, art historian, museum curator, museum director, documentary film producer, and educator. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, assistant professor, 1977-78; Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, professor of American art and chair of department, 1997—. Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT, visiting lecturer, 1977-78; University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, adjunct professor, 1982-84; University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, adjunct professor, 1984-93; University of Missouri, Kansas City, adjunct professor, 1989-93; Colorado College, Colorado Springs, visiting professor, 1996. Carnegie Institute, Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA, curator of fine arts, 1982-84; Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, Samuel Sosland Curator of American Art, 1984-93; Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens, Jacksonville, FL, director, 1994-95; Kemper Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, interim director, 1996; Cleveland Museum of Art, curator of American art, 1997—. Producer, with filmmaker Ken Burns, of PBS documentary about artist Thomas Hart Benton. Curator of traveling art exhibitions.

MEMBER:

College Art Association, Association of Historians of American Art, Massachusetts Historical Society (corresponding member).

AWARDS, HONORS:

Frances Blanshard Prize, Yale University, for best doctoral dissertation in the history of art, 1980; Arthur Kingsley Porter Prize, College Art Association, 1985; William F. Yates Distinguished Service Medallion, William Jewell College, 1989, for career contributions to Kansas City and the Midwest; Northern Ohio Live Visual Arts Award, 2001, for best art exhibition of the year in northern Ohio.

WRITINGS:

William Morris Hunt, a Memorial Exhibition, Museum of Fine Arts (Boston, MA), 1979.

(Author of introduction) Gail Stavitsky, From Vienna to Pittsburgh: The Art of Henry Koerner, Museum of Art (Pittsburgh, PA), 1983.

Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975): An Intimate View; Fine Arts Gallery, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, November 8, 1985-January 25, 1986, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City (Kansas City, MO), 1985.

(Contributor and author of introduction) American Drawings and Watercolors in the Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, Carnegie Museum of Art (Pittsburgh, PA), 1985.

Frederic James, 1915-1985: A Painter from Kansas City; the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (Kansas City, MO), 1986.

(Principal author) John La Farge: Essays, Abbeville Press (New York, NY), 1987.

Thomas Hart Benton: An American Original, Knopf (New York, NY), 1989.

Thomas Hart Benton: Drawing from Life, Abbeville Press (New York, NY), 1990.

Handbook of American Paintings, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (Kansas City, MO), 1991.

(With Margaret Stenz and Jan M. Marsh) American Drawings and Watercolors from the Kansas City Region, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (Kansas City, MO), 1992.

The Arvin Gottlieb Collection: Painters of Taos and Santa Fe, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (Kansas City, MO), 1992.

(Contributor) Marianne Berardi, Under the Influence: The Students of Thomas Hart Benton, Albrecht-Kemper Museum (St. Joseph, MO), 1993.

The Beal Collection of American Art, Carnegie Museum of Art (Pittsburgh, PA), 1994.

Made in America: Ten Centuries of American Art, Hudson Hills Press (New York, NY), 1995.

(Editor, with Margaret C. Conrads and Annegret Hoberg) Albert Bloch: The American Blue Rider, Prestel (New York, NY), 1997.

Intimatexpressions: Two Centuries of American Drawings, Georgia Museum of Art (Athens, GA), 1998.

(Contributor) Pamela T. Barr, editor, New Britain Museum of American Art: Highlights of the Collection, Prestel (New York), 1999.

Viktor Schreckengost and 20th-century Design, Cleveland Museum of Art (Cleveland, OH), 2000.

Eakins Revealed: The Secret Life of an American Artist, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2005.

Andrew Wyeth: Master Drawings from the Artist's Collection, Brandywine River Museum (Chadds Ford, PA), 2006.

Viktor Schreckengost: American Da Vinci, Tide-Mark (Windsor, CT), 2006.

Contributor to museum catalogs, including Under the Influence: The Students of Thomas Hart Benton, by Marianne Berardi, Albrecht-Kemper Museum of Art (St. Joseph, MO), 1993; John Steuart Curry: Inventing the Middle West, by Patricia Junker, Hudson Hills Press (New York, NY), 1998; New Britain Museum of American Art: Highlights of the Collection, edited by Pamela T. Barr, New Britain Museum of Art (New Britain), 1999; and Grant Wood's Main Street: Art, Literature and the American Midwest, by Lea Rosson DeLong, Brunnier Art Museum (Ames, IA), 2004.

Contributor to journals and periodicals, including Studies in the History of Art, Rockwell Kent Collector, San Jose Studies, Burlington Magazine, Art Bulletin, Arts, American Art Journal, Art in America, American Art Review, Smithsonian, American Artist, and Carnegie Magazine.

SIDELIGHTS:

Writer, art historian, and exhibit curator Henry Adams is a prolific author of exhibition catalogues, books and articles on art history, and studies of the works of individual artists. His work focuses primarily on nineteenth-and twentieth-century American artists, including such notable figures as Thomas Hart Benton, Fairfield Porter, Thomas Cole, John La Farge, George Caleb Bingham, and Winslow Homer. Adams has taught art history at several universities throughout the United States and has served as a curator at a number of notable museums, including the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Carnegie Museum of Art.

In Viktor Schreckengost: American Da Vinci, Adams presents a book-length study of the life and career of Schreckengost, a well-known artist and industrial designer. Adams notes that Schreckengost earned the title of "American Da Vinci" not only for the superior quality of his art but also for the practicality and functionality of many of his designs. In addition to his work in fine arts such as painting and sculpture, Schreckengost also excelled in the design of manufactured products, ranging from dinnerware to artificial limbs to bicycles, noted a reviewer on the Case Western University Web log. "Schreckengost's career has left a wake of innovation from aerial maps for the military, flashlights, pedal cars, riding lawn mower, ceiling lighting and dinnerware," remarked the Case Western University Web log reviewer. "Many of his designs were readily produced and accessible to a public that shopped or bought products from Sears, Roebuck and Company, J.C. Penney, Goodyear, Delta Electric, and others," the reviewer continued. In his biography of the artist, Adams covers Schreckengost's history and accomplishments, and also points out several newly discovered works that were found among the artist's extensive files and archives, including batiks and industrial design drawings that illustrate the evolution of many items the artist produced during his career. Adams also includes many drawings of items that were not produced. Throughout the book, Adams focuses on the many facets of Schreckengost's artistic career as well as his status as a pioneer and innovator of industrial design.

Adams considers the work and career of another master of fine art, the brilliant but controversial realist painter Thomas Eakins, in Eakins Revealed: The Secret Life of an American Artist. Considered one of America's great artists, Eakins possessed immense technical talent and ability. Eakins's skillfully produced paintings were often at odds with the sensibility of the Victorian era in which he worked, frankly and honestly depicting both male and female nudes. In his time, Eakins was largely unable to sell his work, and his paintings remained unappreciated for many years after his death. Eakins himself was a controversial and embattled figure. "Adams is thorough and convincing when discussing Eakins's unconventional and sometimes deviant behavior and the various scandals that resulted," remarked Ann Bronwyn Paulk in Art in America. For example, he was accused of incest with a sister, Margaret, and is suspected of sexually abusing a niece, who later killed herself. Eakins is said to have snatched the loincloth off a male model who was posing for a group of female students. He is reported to have required many of his art students to disrobe and pose for each other in the nude, and Eakins himself often joined them. To help understand Eakins and his motivations, Adams undertakes a detailed psychosexual analysis of the content of several of the artist's paintings. He observes that many of the people in his paintings seem unhappy, particularly apparent in a portrait of his wife, Susan. He also notes that many of the young male nudes are depicted at the height of their physical beauty, whereas many female subjects are portrayed in an unattractive and masculine manner, leading to speculation that Eakins harbored voyeuristic and homosexual tendencies. Throughout the book, Adams strives to understand the conflicts in Eakins's life and personality, and to consider the nature and origin of the many troubles that plagued him. In the end, Adams finds that severe childhood trauma and emotional distress led to the psychopathologies that Eakins displayed in adulthood.

Adams "does not mince words: The Eakins that emerges here is mentally disturbed to a crippling and even pathological extent, signs of which are to be found everywhere in his painting," commented Michael J. Lewis in the New York Sun. However, "for Mr. Adams, Eakins's art cannot be understood at all unless it is recognized as the expression, at least in part, of his mental illness." Adams's "meticulous, frequently audacious arguments and bold, if occasionally forced, psychological interpretations" of Eakins's work "are as well crafted as they are incendiary," remarked Booklist reviewer Donna Seaman.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Art in America, February, 2007, Ann Bronwyn Paulk, "Eakins: Revealed and Revenged," review of Eakins Revealed: The Secret Life of an American Artist, p. 37.

Booklist, April 1, 2005, Donna Seaman, review of Eakins Revealed, p. 1335.

Chronicle of Higher Education, May 28, 2004, Thomas Bartlett, "Course at Case Western Reserve U. Examines the Intersection of Art and Math."

New York Sun, June 2, 2005, Michael J. Lewis, "A Predilection for Facts & Things," review of Eakins Revealed.

New York Times, May 21, 2005, Dinitia Smith, "Eakins the Tormented? A Biographer's Dark View Ruffles the Field," review of Eakins Revealed, p. 11.

ONLINE

Angle,http://www.anglemagazine.com/ (November 27, 2007), Douglas Max Utter, "Point, Counterpoint: Eakins' Debatable Past," review of Eakins Revealed.

Artopia,http://www.artsjournal.com/artopia/ (February 6, 2006), John Perreault, "Eakins Naked," review of Eakins Revealed.

Artscape,http://www.artscapemedia.com/ (November 27, 2007), biography of Henry Adams.

Case Western Reserve University Web log,http://blog.case.edu/ (August 2, 2006), "Case Art Historian Pays Tribute to Viktor Schreckengost," review of Viktor Schreckengost: American Da Vinci.

Case Western Reserve University Web site,http://www.case.edu/ (November 27, 2007), curriculum vitae of Henry Adams.