As we go to press, The Syncopated Times has learned that Kenyon Adams, a multi-media performance artist and curator, will be named director of the Louis Armstrong House Museum, succeeding Michael Cogswell, who retired after 27 years as the first LAHM director. Adams is scheduled to assume his new position on January 14.
Originally from Orlando, Florida, where he grew up as a gospel singer and actor, Adams most recently has been arts initiative director of the Grace Farms Foundation of New Canaan, Connecticut, where he sought “to actualize the integrative presence of the arts throughout the initiatives at Grace Farms by developing new collaborative and site-specific works in literary, visual, and performing arts through various innovative partnerships.”
He received his BFA in Theater from the Meadows School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University and studied the arts and religion at Yale Divinity School and the Yale Institute of Sacred Music where he was awarded the Director’s Prize for his presentation of the blues aesthetic as American lament.
Recipient of the Greer Garson Award, a National Young Arts Foundation award, he was named a White House Presidential Scholar in the Arts. He has contributed art and dialogue to the National Arts Policy Roundtable.
Designated a National Historic Landmark in 1977, the Louis Armstrong House Museum is located in Corona, Queens, New York, where Louis and wife Lucille lived for 28 years (1943-71). It formally opened as a museum in 2003 and annually attracts 20,000 visitors. A $23-million Educational and Visitors Center is currently under construction across the street, with a projected opening in early 2020.
Further Reading:
Louis Armstrong House Museum in Transition
Michael Cogswell Retires from Directorship of Louis Armstrong House
Louis Armstrong House Museum Names New Director
Louis Armstrong Collection Now Digitized
Louis Armstrong’s Queens Home Now a Shrine to His Genius
Ricky Riccardi’s 20 Essential Louis Armstrong Recordings
Lew Shaw started writing about music as the publicist for the famous Berkshire Music Barn in the 1960s. He joined the West Coast Rag in 1989 and has been a guiding light to this paper through the two name changes since then as we grew to become The Syncopated Times. 47 of his profiles of today's top musicians are collected in Jazz Beat: Notes on Classic Jazz.Volume two, Jazz Beat Encore: More Notes on Classic Jazz contains 43 more! Lew taps his extensive network of connections and friends throughout the traditional jazz world to bring us his Jazz Jottings column every month.
