At MoMA, Adams will be one of two curators devoted to Latin American Art. She will work closely with Inés Katzenstein, a curator of Latin American art and director of the museum’s Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Research Institute for the Study of Art from Latin America, to shape the collection and develop exhibition activities.
“MoMA has a long history of engagement with Latin American art and today has the most outstanding collection of its type,” Adams said in a statement. “I look forward to building on that foundation and bringing new perspectives to the collection and to the exhibitions.”
Adams joined the Blanton staff in 2013. During her tenure at the University of Texas museum, Adams oversaw the reinstallation of the Latin American permanent collection galleries in and played an integral role in the acquisition of scholar Jacqueline Barnitz’s collection of Latin American art. She organized shows such as “The Avant-Garde Networks of Amauta: Argentina, Mexico, and Peru in the 1920s” (2019), “Words/Matter: Latin American Art and Language” (2019), and “Javier Téllez: Letter on the Blind for the Use of Those Who See” (2017), among others.
From 2001 to 2013, she was curator for the Diane and Bruce Halle collection in Arizona. Previously she held curatorial positions at the San Antonio Museum of Art and the Phoenix Art Museum. She taught 20th-century Latin American art history courses at Arizona State University from 1997 to 1999. Adams holds a PhD in art history from rhe University of Texas at Austin.
