Recent Acquisition: "This Could All Be Yours" by Derrick Adams

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Derrick Adams (United States, born 1970), This Could All Be Yours, 2020, inkjet and 6 color screen print on paper, 19 1/2 x 28 7/8 inches. Portland Museum of Art, Maine. Museum purchase with support from the Contemporary Art Fund, 2020.18. Image courtesy of the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture. © Derrick Adams

Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture builds lifelong relationships with its alumni and often collaborates with artists on limited edition prints. In 2020, Baltimore-born, New York-based artist Derrick Adams created This Could All Be Yours for the residency’s annual print benefit. Adams was a resident at Skowhegan in 2002 and returned as a faculty artist in 2013. In his work, he explores the relationship between African American experiences and art history as well as American iconography and consumerism.

This Could All Be Yours is borne out of the series Live and in Color, which speaks to the largerthan-life personalities of people of color as historically portrayed to home viewers on American television. This work adapts, confronts, and recasts sitcom characters or news broadcasters whose psychological attributes and mannerisms were often exaggerated in popular culture. The vintage TV frame is part of the subject as well as a compositional framing device for his two figures. Its metallic rim and faux-woodgrain panel is adopted from television sets of the 1980s and ’90s. This print and Adams’ larger body of works highlight the intersections of popular culture, fashion, and Black experience in the arts.