“Edges of Ailey, opening at the Whitney Museum of American Art on September 25, is the first large-scale museum exhibition to celebrate the life, dances, influences, adjacencies, and enduring legacy of visionary artist and choreographer Alvin Ailey (b. 1931, Rogers, TX; d. 1989, New York, NY). This dynamic showcase brings together visual art, live performance, music, a range of archival materials, and a multi-screen video installation drawn from recordings of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (AAADT) repertory to explore the full range of Ailey’s personal and creative life. Presented in three parts, Edges of Ailey consists of an immersive exhibition in the Museum’s 18,000 square-foot fifth-floor galleries, an ambitious suite of performances in the Museum’s third-floor Theater, and an accompanying scholarly catalogue.” — Whitney Museum of American Art

“Edges of Ailey is one of—if not the—most ambitious and complex exhibitions undertaken in the Whitney’s history,” said Scott Rothkopf, the Alice Pratt Brown Director of the Whitney. “Now is Ailey’s time and our time as an art museum to recognize his immense creative force not simply as one of the 20th century’s greatest American choreographers, nor as its greatest Black choreographer, but as one of the greatest artists working in any medium anywhere in the world. This exhibition situates Ailey—and those he drew on and inspired—smack in the middle of the avant-garde, right where they belong. In so doing, it pressures and even redefines the trajectory of art history by making it contend with stories and forms it had once ignored. Ailey, quite simply, forged a capacious new mode for ‘expressing the Black experience,’ as he put it, and to share this legacy with our visitors is an honor.”

“Following six years of dreaming, planning, and researching, the extravaganza that is Edges of Ailey finally enters the world,” said Adrienne Edwards, Engell Speyer Family Senior Curator and Associate Director of Curatorial Programs. “Throughout this process, we have had the gift of Mr. Ailey’s guidance, available to us in his notebooks, interviews, dances, and by the way he did things, to which we have kept very close, and which has shaped every aspect of this show. Until now, there have been many exhibitions in art museums about dance but none about Ailey, a true icon and unquestionably deserving subject. Along the way, every time I told someone that I was working on this project, they would share their own Ailey experience. So many of us have a story about Ailey, the dance company. Such is the extent of his importance and reach. Now audiences will have the chance to know his story. It is no small task to hold someone’s legacy of this cultural magnitude in your hands. We have made something that aims to have the same imagination, sparkle, generosity, rigor, and daring as did he.”

Edges of Ailey is organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art in collaboration with the Alvin Ailey Dance Foundation. The exhibition is curated by Adrienne Edwards, Engell Speyer Family Senior Curator and Associate Director of Curatorial Programs, with Joshua Lubin-Levy, Curatorial Research Associate, and CJ Salapare, Curatorial Assistant.

Images courtesy Whitney Museum of American Art.