On view through February 9, 2025, Edges of Ailey celebrates Alvin Ailey, an American icon and the founder of one of the world’s most acclaimed dance companies. The Whitney Museum has transformed its fifth-floor galleries, removing all interior walls to create an expansive, open space where everything is bathed in a deep red—the walls, the floating partitions, and the floor-to-ceiling curtains that envelop the room. Visitors are invited to drift through and almost dance around the space, guided by a soundtrack featuring Marvin Gaye, the Bee Gees, and Stevie Wonder. Yet, despite this sensory immersion, a lingering question remains: how can a museum capture the legacy of such a dynamic man and his powerful performances through the stillness of visual art?
Curator Adrienne Edwards has crafted a sprawling exhibition that spans both a gallery installation and a performance program. For the installation, she has assembled a star-studded lineup—including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Mickalene Thomas, and Romare Bearden, to name just a few—placing their works alongside Ailey’s personal effects and ephemera; letters, journal entries, and even packing lists reveal the man behind the performances.
While massive paintings and sculptures dominate the room, it’s the smaller, more intimate items—Ailey’s journal entries and letters—that best capture his personal complexity. His handwriting oscillates between shaky and bold. His “nervous breakdown” detailed in his journals serves as a reminder of the price he paid to build a dance company that remains an international institution.
The heart of Edges of Ailey beats through clips of Ailey’s choreography and voice. A looping video installation, alternating between interview and performance clips, spans 12 screens. Ailey’s words float through the air, “I’m a Black man whose roots are in the sun and the dirt of the South.” These moments bring Ailey’s spirit into the gallery, but they never linger long enough for the audience to settle into his movement, his essence. The clips are brief, offering glimpses, rather than the full flow of his dance performances.
In the “Southern Imaginary” and “Black Spirituality” sections of the exhibition, pieces like Benny Andrews’s “The Way to the Promised Land,” (1994) and Beverly Buchanan’s hand-crafted shacks speak to Ailey’s memories of his Texas childhood and involvement in “the Gospel churches of the South,” Ailey’s voice echoes throughout the room. Their “holy blues, paeans to joy, anthems to the human spirit,” which Ailey describes, later influenced his iconic “Revelations,” a ballet performed to African American spirituals and song sermons that soulfully explores both immense grief and joy.
Though Edges of Ailey features sections dedicated to a range of topics, such as “Black Women,” “Black Liberation,” and “Ailey’s Collaborators,” the exhibition largely omits representations of queer love within the Black community, a critical aspect of Ailey’s experience. This omission feels especially poignant given that his sexuality contributed to his death during the AIDS epidemic and the near loss of his career, when the FBI allegedly threatened to bankrupt his company if he were to display signs of his sexuality while on tour. The absence of a more explicit exploration of his queerness leaves an incomplete portrait, particularly in a show that celebrates Black identity and resilience across so many areas.
While the exhibition navigates the challenging terrain of honoring a performance artist primarily through visual art, it breathes life into Ailey’s story. Though gaps remain, the exhibition ultimately celebrates the acceptance, joy, and resilience Ailey brought to the dance world, inviting visitors not only to see but to feel the legacy of a man whose work transcended boundaries.
