He studied history of art, archaeology and history at the universities of Munich, Vienna and Tübingen, earning a doctorate in 1964 on the topic of the design of medieval places of sermon.
After working for some years as a conservator in Darmstadt, Adriani became the director of the newly founded Kunsthalle in Tübingen, the town of his last alma mater, in 1971.
In his more than 30 years at the Kunsthalle (1971 to 2005), he made it one of the most prestigious museums, especially for modern and contemporary art, in Germany.
Since 1985, Adriani holds the title of an honorary professor at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe.
[4] He published important work documentation books on Joseph Beuys (1994), Paul Cézanne (1982 and 2006), Auguste Renoir (1988), Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1987) and the contemporary German painters known as Junge Wilde (2003).