Being designated as one of Houston’s “100 Creatives”

The Houston Press has selected me as one of Houston’s “100 Creatives” for 2013. I’m quite flattered an honored to be on this list. I credit Visual Arts Alliance and Arts Brookfield for a lot of where I am today. Here is some of the article:

If you’re looking for a fight on who qualifies as a “real” art curator, you won’t find one with Matt Adams. That’s not because he doesn’t have any thoughts on the issue, he does. He just doesn’t think the debate is worth the effort. “There’s been a lot of talk over the last few years because anyone can call themselves a curator. I just choose not to engage in those discussions because it’s pointless.
“There’s not an industry standard to be [an art] curator. If you’re going to be a hairdresser, the state will issue you a license saying you’re a hairdresser. So there’s a definition for that industry. If you’re going to be a CPA, that industry has a definition, a standard you have to meet before you can say you’re a CPA. Art doesn’t have that.”
Adams, a digital artist and president of the Visual Arts Alliance, didn’t study to become a curator — at least not in a classroom. “When I joined the VAA, it was already 22 years old. There was lots of experience there and people were very generous and showed me how to put a show together, what worked, what didn’t.” Later Adams became president of the organization and as such, liaison to Brookfield Properties, a property management company that includes arts programming in its public spaces. After working with him on other VAA projects, Brookfield approached Adams and asked that he take over visual art programming in its Houston buildings. Adams agreed and officially added the term curator to his resume.
“There’s a lot of prejudice out there against people [like me] by people who do have the formal education. ‘You know, Matt, you can’t call yourself a curator unless you have a degree in art history, unless you have an MFA. How dare you call yourself a curator?’ I get it. I recognize I came into this … in a very unconventional, non-academic, non-formal … way. but I don’t know what other term to use [for what I do] than curator, and that annoys some people. “

You can read the entire article here.