Kenyon Adams (1997, FL)

Kenyon Victor Adams (1997 YoungArts Winner in Theater & U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts)

Kenyon Victor Adams is a multidisciplinary artist and curator. His recent work explores the notion of fractured epistemologies, and seeks to reclaim or expand various ways of knowing through integrative artistic practices. Adams has contributed art and thought leadership at Yale School of Drama, Yale ISM Poetry Conference, Live Ideas Festival, the Langston Hughes Project, the National Arts Policy Roundtable, and the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College. He studied religion and literature at Yale Divinity School, and theology of contemporary performance at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music. Adams served as artist-in-residence at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music for the 2015-16 academic year. His multimedia performance works have addressed issues of legibility, race, and American memory. Currently in production through New York Live Arts, Prayers of the People, directed by Bill T. Jones, is a performance work responding to the writings of Martin Luther King, Jr. Adams is the founding arts initiative director at Grace Farms and the SANAA-designed River Building in New Canaan, CT. He currently serves as the director of the Louis Armstrong House Museum & Archives in Corona, NY. 

Adams made his feature film debut as Jason in award-winning director Lee Isaac Chung’s 2010 narrative feature Lucky Life, which premiered at Tribeca Film Festival and was selected for the Moscow International Film Festival, Torino Film Festival, American Film Festival Poland, and others. Adams has performed nationally as a vocalist, songwriter and blues harmonica player. In 2011, he formed the band Kenyon Adams & American Restless. With director Sarah Peterson and jazz scholar Willie Ruff, Adams helped to stage Long Wharf Theater’s production of Langston’s Hughes’ Black Nativity.