Born in 1897, Kenneth Miller Adams studied with G.M. Stone in Topeka at age 16, before entering the AIC in 1916. After serving in the Army as a private in World War I, he studied at the ASL beginning 1919, the pupil of K H Miller, Bridgman, Sterne, and Speicher. Summers were with Dasburg in Woodstock. From 1921 to 1923, Adams studied in France and Italy, painting landscapes he exhibited in Topeka.

In 1924, Adams followed Dasburg's advice, settling in Taos with an introduction to Ufer. He became the youngest and last member of the Taos Society of Artists, but he was more than a duplicate of the original members' emphasis on the romantic Indian. Adams was contemporary realist, influenced by Dasburg and working in the tradition of Rivera and Orozco.

Technically conservative, Adams was nevertheless concerned with the daily lives of his agrarian neighbors. In 1929, Adams began teaching at the U of New Mexico in Taos. The dominant subjects in his work became the Spanish Americans and landscapes.

IIn 1938, he moved to Albuquerque because he was awarded a Carnegie Corporation Grant to become the first artist-in-residence at the University of New Mexico. He taught there for the next twenty-five years until 1963, becoming a full professor. In 1938, he was also elected an Associate Member of the National Academy of Design in New York and a full member in 1961

Resource: SAMUELS' Encyclopedia of ARTISTS of THE AMERICAN WEST, Peggy and Harold Samuels, 1985, Castle Publishing