Abraham Adams

CV

Education

  • 2023Royal College of Art, MA, Photography (Distinction)
  • 2020Brown University, MFA, Literary Arts
  • 2009Hampshire College, BA, Poetics and Rhetoric

Positions

  • 2025–Time Farm Books, Editor
  • 2024–25University of Florida, Lecturer
  • 2020–21Rhode Island School of Design, Lecturer
  • 2019–20Brown University, Graduate Teaching Assistant
  • 2013–19Artforum, copy editor and regular contributor
  • 2012–14Zone Books, Associate Editor
  • 2011–15Ugly Duckling Presse, Editor

Books

  • 2022Ambulance Chasers, MIT Press (with a text by David Joselit)
  • 2018Nothing in MoMA, Punctum Books (introduction by David Joselit)
  • 2016Before, Inpatient Press
  • 2016Intersubjectivity, Volume 1: Language and Misunderstanding, Sternberg Press (co-editor)

Exhibitions

Selected writing

  • 2026“Contact,” in Data Browser (Open Humanities Press)
  • 2025“Poem,” The Baffler
  • 2025“Letter,” McSweeney’s
  • 2024“Claire DeVoogd,” interview, Full Stop
  • 2024“Portfolio: Francesca Hummler,” Artforum
  • 2022“Collectivity,” Der Greif
  • 2020“Katarina Burin,” Artforum
  • 2020“Jonathan Berger,” Artforum
  • 2019“Emily Jacir,” Artforum
  • 2018“Utopie Radicali: Florence 1966–1976,” artforum.com
  • 2018“The Return of a Lost Cause,” in Is It Soup Yet?, Bodega Gallery
  • 2017“Derek Walcott (1930–2017),” artforum.com
  • 2017“Lewis Freedman,” Poetry Project Newsletter
  • 2016“Say ‘Ah,’” Triple Canopy
  • 2016“Norwegian Process Art and Conceptual Art in the 1970s and ’80s,” artforum.com
  • 2016“Max Ritvo (1990–2016),” artforum.com
  • 2015“Still There: A Visit to the Mansion of Frederic Edwin Church,” harpers.com
  • 2015“Tomaž Šalamun (1941–2014),” artforum.com
  • 2013–18Further reviews and obituaries, artforum.com

Texts on the work

  • 2023Bomb, interview
  • 2023Anthropology of Work Review, review
  • 2022Asphalte Magazine, interview
  • 2021The Art Show, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, interview
  • 2020Cited in Paul Stephens, Absence of Clutter: Minimal Writing as Art and Literature (MIT Press)
  • 2019PIN-UP, “Nothing in MoMA: Abraham Adams’s Exaltation of Absence”
  • 2014Cited in Namwali Serpell, Seven Modes of Uncertainty (Harvard University Press)
  • David Joselit, texts for Ambulance Chasers, Nothing in MoMA, and “Contact”

Awards and residencies

  • 2026Institute for Advanced Study, Visitorship
  • 2025T. S. Eliot House Residency
  • 2024Creative Capital Award, finalist
  • 2022Phil Smith Student Photographic Award, First Place
  • 2021T. S. Eliot House Residency
  • 2019Republic of Slovenia Public Fund for Cultural Activities Residency
  • 2019Joukowsky Summer Research Award
  • 2019Brown Arts Initiative Student Grant
  • 2019T. S. Eliot House Residency
  • 2018–19Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant, finalist

Teaching

  • 2024–25University of Florida: Thinking in Photographs; Writing in the Visual Arts; What Is Everyday Photography?; Writing in the Law
  • 2020–21Rhode Island School of Design: Critical Aesthetics: Writing About Art and Design; Global Modernisms; Pre-Modern Worlds; Text-Photo Book Publication
  • 2019–20Brown University: Poetry I; Poetry II: Inelegy