The Milton S. Eisenhower Library at Johns Hopkins University will feature a major abstract painting by Lindsay Adams when it reopens next year following a $130 million renovation.
Hopkins officials announced this week that the university has acquired Kind of Blue (1959), a 2024 oil-on-canvas diptych that was inspired by the Miles Davis album with the same title. Released on August 17, 1959, the Miles Davis album is considered one of the most influential jazz albums of all time.
Adams’ large-scale artwork was exhibited from Oct. 29, 2025, to March 7, 2026, as the centerpiece of her solo exhibition in the Irene and Richard Frary Gallery at the Hopkins Bloomberg Center in Washington, D. C.
It will be installed permanently in the Eisenhower Library, the principal research library on Hopkins’ Homewood campus. Closed for renovations since mid-2024, the library is scheduled to reopen in early 2027.
The acquisition was made possible by a gift of funds from Daniel Weiss, Homewood Professor of the Humanities and Senior Advisor to the Provost for the Arts at Johns Hopkins University and current CEO and Director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
According to Hopkins, the purchase represents the university’s commitment to investing in work by contemporary artists from the Baltimore and Washington, D. C. regions. Adams, a native of Washington, D. C., is a writer and painter who works across traditional mediums. Born in 1990, she is one of the artists who was commissioned to create a site-specific installation, entitled Weary Blues, for the Obama Presidential Center opening soon in Chicago. Her work has been exhibited at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library in Washington, among other places. She currently is an Artist-in-Residence at the World Trade Center in New York City.
A diptych is a work of art that consists of two panels presented together to create a single artistic statement. Each panel of Kind of Blue (1959) measures 72 inches by 84 inches by 1 3/4 inches. A purchase price has not been disclosed.
“The acquisition of Lindsay Adams’ Kind of Blue (1959) builds on the University’s tradition of increasing public access to art that reflects and interprets our society,” Weiss said in a statement. “I am delighted to contribute to the acquisition of this piece and to reinforce the importance of the arts in this way.”
“We’re excited to add Lindsay Adams’ Kind of Blue (1959) to the Eisenhower Library’s revitalized program of public art when the building reopens next year,” said Elisabeth Long, Sheridan Dean of University Libraries, Archives and Museums at Johns Hopkins, in a statement.
“As a hub of learning and discovery on campus, the library brings art into the daily experience of our students, faculty and visitors, and we’re creating new spaces that will support object-centered teaching and research with works that spark deep thinking and creative inquiry like Kind of Blue (1959),” Long said.
Drawing inspiration from music is a recurring theme of Adams’ work. Many of her paintings are inspired by Black musical histories and compositions, literature and poetry.
“Her practice intentionally builds upon a tradition begun by African American abstractionist painters in the mid-20th century who connected their work to visual representations of jazz and poetry, drawing on the form’s improvisational nature,” Hopkins said in its announcement of the acquisition. Kind of Blue (1959) “uses Davis’ album as the starting point for Adams’ vivid canvas in varying shades of blue, creating a layered composition that reflects both personal, communal and historical narratives.”
The Frary Gallery exhibit in which Kind of Blue (1959) was shown, entitled “Ceremony,” included 14 original paintings and five works on paper by Adams, exploring Black migration and world-building.
“The works centered around the idea of togetherness, creating imagined spaces of belonging that reflect the histories of Black liberation while inspiring and nurturing the creation of new ones,” Hopkins’ announcement said. “Displayed in conversation with Adams’ works were archival materials from the university library’s collections that resonated with the artist’s conceptual meditations on themes of Black mobility, placing her work into an important historical context.”
More information about Hopkins’ art collection is available at https://campuscollection.library.jhu.edu/.
