Adela Akers

Adela Akers (February 7, 1933 – August 9, 2023) was a Spanish-born textile and fiber artist residing in the United States. She was Professor Emeritus (1972 to 1995) at the Tyler School of Art. Her career as an artist spans the "whole history of modern fiber art." Her work is in the Renwick Gallery, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Art and Design. Her papers (dating from 1960 to 2009) are at the Archives of American Art.

Early life and education Akers was born on February 7, 1933, in Santiago de Compostela, Spain. She was raised in Cuba, her mother was a trained seamstress, and later she and her husband had a small import business in Havana, Cuba. Akers' exposure to business practices through her family helped her later in life to run her own small art business.

Traditional weavers

In 1965, she was asked by the Alliance for Progress to perform a survey of weaving in rural Peru to ascertain the market potential of weavers there. She lived in a small town, Chota, in northern Peru for four months, studying the traditional weavers and . (Ituri Forest in the Democratic Republic of the Congo). Pre-Columbian work appealed to Akers because she saw math and geometry in it.

Akers worked in series, with each piece informing the next. . At Temple University she was head of the fiber department at the Tyler School of Art beginning in 1972. She also taught at San Francisco State University in 1981.

Awards and honors

She received National Endowment for the Arts crafsman's fellowships in 1974 and 1980, a New Jersey Council on the Arts grant in 1971, and a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant in 1983.

Exhibitions 2014 "August Artist-in-Residence: Adela Akers: Traced Memories" Fine Art Museum of San Francisco at Snyderman-Works Galleries, Philadelphia PA 2010 Sonoma County Museum 2010 "The 49th Anniversary Show" Triangle Gallery 2008 "Ashes to Art", The Gallery at FUNERIA 1991 Philadelphia Museum of Art 1986 Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts 1982 Rhode Island School of Design 1982 Cooper–Hewitt, National Design Museum