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Adams' paintings and lithographs are in many public collections, including the Albuquerque Museum; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Brooklyn Museum; Australian National Gallery; Art Institute of Chicago; Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth; British Museum, London; Los Angeles County Art Museum; Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Academy of Design, New York; Phoenix Art Museum; Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe, and the National Museum of American Art, Smithstonian Institution, Washington, among others. An archive collection of Adams' work has been established at the University of New Mexico Art Museum in Albuquerque. His most recent solo exhibitions have been at the UNM Art Museum (1987, paintings; 1998, lithographs); California State University, Northridge (1988); Janus Gallery, Santa Fe (1989); Richard Levy Gallery, Albuquerque (1997); Tobey C. Moss Gallery, Los Angeles (1989, 1991, 1994, 1997 and 1999); Albuquerque Museum (1997); Kennedy Museum of American Art, Athens, Ohio (1998), and Long Beach Museum of Art (1999).
Born in Glendale, Calif., in 1918, Adams studied at the University of California, Los Angeles. Following military service during World War II, he held academic positions at UCLA, University of Kentucky, University of Florida and the University of New Mexico, hwere he served as dean of the College of Fine arts (1961-76). He retired from teaching in 1985 to devote his time to painting and writing.
Adams began work in lithography in 1948. He participated with June Wayne in founding the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in 1960. when Tamarind moved to Albuquerque in 1970 (becoming Tamarind Institute), Adams became its director (1970-85). He established The Tamarind Papers: a Journal of the Fine Print in 1974, and served as its editor (1974-90). Frequent lecturer and symposia participant, Adams authored more than 100 articles principally relating to the history of lithography. With Garo Antreasian, Adams co-authored The Tamarind Book of Lithography: Art and Techniques (Abrams, 1972), the standard work in the field. The New York Times praised as "definitive" his book American Lithographers 1900-1960: The Artists and Their Printers (1983). His other books are Printmaking in New Mexico: 1880-1990 (1991), Crayonstone: The Life and Work of Bolton Brown (1993), Second Impressions: Modern Prints and printmakers Reconsidered (editor, 1996) and Nineteenth Century Lithography in Europe (1998).
In 1985, Adams received the Governor's Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Arts of New Mexico. The National Academy of Design elected him "Academician" in 1993, and the Southern Graphics Council gave him the "Printmaker-Emeritus Award" in 1998. Biographical sketches of Adams' career appear in Dictionalry of Art (Grove-Macmillan, 1997) and A Spectrum of Innovation: Color in American Printmaking 1890-1960 (Norton, 1990). He is also listed in Who's Who in America and Who's Who in American Art.
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