Edges of Ailey

This major exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York is dedicated to dancer, choreographer and activist Alvin Ailey, celebrating his colossal contribution to the performing arts (25 September–9 February 2025). The show is divided into two sections, occupying the museum’s fifth-floor galleries and in-house theatre. In the galleries is an 18-channel video installation exploring to Ailey’s life and career, as well as archival materials, performance footage, letters, posters and more. Also on display are works by some 80 artists, including Faith Ringgold and Archibald John Motley Jnr., which have been arranged by themes that were central to Ailey’s work, such as Black spirituality, migration, liberation and the history of Black music and dance. In the theatre, live performances by the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, which Ailey founded in 1958, are held during one week of each month. In the weeks the dance company is not in residence, the museum is hosting performances by contemporary choreographers, such as Ralph Lemon and Peter Born.

Find out more from Whitney’s website.

Preview below | View Apollo’s Art Diary

Alvin Ailey, Myrna White, James Truitte, Ella Thompson, Minnie Marshall, and Don Martin in “Revelations” (1961), Jack Mitchell. © Alvin Ailey Dance Foundation, Inc. and Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

Gettin’ Religion (1948), Archibald John Motley, Jr. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. © Valerie Gerrard Browne

United States of Attica (1971), Faith Ringgold. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. © 2024 Faith Ringgold/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York