Wilbur Adam began his art training in 1912 at the Cincinnati Art Academy where he studied under Wessel, Hopkins, Meakin, Duveneck, and Caroline Lord. A native of Mt. Auburn, he joined the Cincinnati Art Club in 1919, was one of the five members who later incorporated the club, and served in various offices, including president from 1965-1967. He was widely known during his lifetime.

The first 30 years of Adam's career were spent primarily in the areas of advertising art and book illustrations, here in Cincinnati and in Chicago. He returned to Cincinnati in 1951, when he installed a studio in what had been the garage of his parents' home on Highland Ave.  

He was a guest exhibitor at the Pennsylvania Academy, Philadelphia, PA, and the Albright Gallery in Buffalo NY.  Other art museums that have exhibited examples of his work at the Corcoran Art Gallery in Washington DC, and the St. Louis Art Museum, and the Cincinnati Art Museum.

Adam was a guest artist of the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, -Oyster Bay, Long Island on two occasions in 1921 and 1929.  In 1921 he won second prize in the Chaloner Paris Scholarship Competition of the National Academy, New York, and in 1925 he was awarded the Chicago Art Institute August Peabody Prize.

He died in Cincinnati in 1973.