Ever since joining the Whitney Museum in 2018, Dr. Adrienne Edwards, the senior curator and associate director of curatorial programs, has been dreaming of the famed choreographer, Alvin Ailey. So much so that she’s spent nearly seven years combing his archive, exploring his extensive dance-based repertoire and adjacent practices in preparation for “Edges of Ailey,” the first large-scale exhibition celebrating his legacy at the Whitney. “I got to just sit with what he said and what he was thinking. And then the task was how to unfold this in a visual experience,” Edwards says of the process. From founding the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, the associated Ailey School, to his beloved choreographic masterpiece, Revelations, Alvin Ailey nurtured generations of Black dancers, and in turn, shifted contemporary culture through his distinct movement and form. Nearly 35 years after his death, Edwards has set the stage for a revisiting of Ailey’s expansive life.
On a warm afternoon in late July, I made my way to the Whitney, where I met with Edwards in her unfussy office, lined with books that cover everything from performance studies to contemporary African art. Unpretentious and warm, she immediately offered me water and fruit snacks. The art world can be stuffy, but Edwards is open and eager to share. For curators like her, an exhibition is not simply a constellation of artworks and histories interwoven through textual analysis and creative display, it is its own world. And Edwards understands her assignment as a shepherd for Ailey’s legacy: guiding countless visitors through the three-part, immersive exhibition, spread across 18,000 square feet of exhibition space.
“We’ve created this montage of sound and moving image that will wrap the perimeter of the fifth floor, taking people through this experience, and that is made to live with the 82 plus other artists who are also sharing this space by themes that connect very directly to Mr. Ailey’s life,” Edwards explains. The exhibition includes a selection of Ailey’s personal artifacts and archival video recordings that lend themslves to the works on display by giants like Jean-Michel Basquiat, Carrie Mae Weems, Jacob Lawrence, and Kara Walker to name just a few. As much as “Edges of Ailey” is a celebration of the late, great choreographer, it is also an ode to the world of Black art and to Edwards’s dazzling curatorial vision.
“Edges of Ailey” has been six years in the making. What has emerged in your understanding of Alvin Ailey’s life and legacy during this time?
I remember thinking some years ago, I wonder why no one’s done an exhibition on Ailey? And then when I came to the Whitney, I was talking with Scott Rothkopf, who was then the chief curator, and he asked me what show I would want to do. It was almost so obvious to me that I thought, because no one had done it, that maybe there just wasn’t enough material history beyond the repertory, which we can all go to City Center, or Lincoln Center, or even the Brooklyn Academy of Music to see. What I realized very quickly is that there was a trove of material there. And it was so complex — that the work to be done was really to show the world that what we think we know about Ailey is way more complicated, multivalent, unfolding, constellatory than any of us realize. It was like a universe. I couldn’t believe it.
What became compelling to me was actually to go back and ask who was this man? And what made him do this in 1958? Who was he looking at? What was he reading? That’s kind of how the journey started. The beauty of his notebooks literally took my breath away. I remember just sitting there, going through boxes everywhere — thousands of pages of paper. There was no distinction between his personal life and his creative life. What I mean by that is you would have a page where he would literally be creating these taxonomies of all these different choreographers. He was citing visual artists … he was citing innocence. But then on the next page, he would have, “I have to clean my apartment. I have to actually get a bookshelf. I have to do all these minutiae.”
We really tracked super close to him. The exhibition section that includes visual artists comes from these amazing quotes repeated by him in televised interviews, but also in his notebooks. Ailey wanted to be a painter, he wanted to be a sculptor, he wanted to write the great American novel, he wanted to be a poet. And for him, dance kind of sieved all these things. Ailey talked about dance-making as a kind of movement of images.
Alvin Ailey is an ancestor that’s animating your life and this space. I wonder, was there a moment where your understanding of his performance expanded beyond the profane to being fully enveloped in his—
Cosmological worldview. I mean, it’s hard to pull it apart, you know, because I think in some ways, everything that I said up to this point about Ailey was my own, and reflects my own process with the material. It registers really differently when you’re looking at it analytically. I was really blown away by how the dances that Ailey choreographed really held up over time.
I have to ask — are TikTok dances the death of culture or a new form of creative practice?
It’s funny, I don’t really use social media. I lurk, as my friends know, but I don’t really engage in it, because I think if I went down that rabbit hole I would be in it endlessly. That said, I find what’s happening on TikTok to be fascinating. It is an interesting question because on the one hand, I think the question is more about the mechanism of transference.It happens more quickly now. The mechanism is mediated through technology, but we had other kinds of technologies, technologies or techniques of the body that are not dissimilar. If you think about the way that dances like the Lindy Hop evolved, or the dances that Black folks do at family reunions, I mean, you can go anywhere and people will start doing line dances, and you will hop in because you know it, because it has been transmitted.
How would you describe the goals of your work as a scholar and curator?
I think of show-making as a way of telling a story. You’re narrating a history or you’re narrating someone’s life. At this point in my career, I’ve done over 50 commissions with artists, primarily visual artists. That’s important because you have to get into an artist’s brain. You also have to understand the fullness of their creativity and practice in order to be able to say, what is your idea? And then you figure out how to shepherd that idea into reality, which is not just a scholarly process, it’s a highly intuitive and artistic process. I have to also be very clear about where the artist begins and I end.
I look at Black women curators particularly in the museum world, like yourself, Legacy Russell, Rujeko Hockley, and Thelma Golden, who’ve completely expanded our vision of contemporary art and museum-based curation. The work that you’ve collectively and individually done is monumental. What advice would you offer to folks interested in curatorial work? Particularly for Black women and femmes.
I mean, there’s so much to say. And 90 percent of what is to be said should be said one-on-one and behind closed doors. I don’t think that curation is something that can be taught. I don’t think that you can study it. You can study other people’s shows, and you should, but I think that there is a sort of triangulation that has to happen that I feel like I don’t see enough of, actually. But I would encourage people toward a deep attunement to sensuality that acknowledges the fact that when you go see a show, as curators, we’re actually being. We’re trying to make people feel something. Are you compelled when you’re in that show? I feel sensuality is very important — understanding that there are structures of feeling that are taking place in shows. I would say another is being fearless. Whatever the norm is, go in a different direction, which is not without risk, but is also with great reward. Maybe risk should be the goal. I would say you can only do those things if you have a deep and profound understanding of the fields you’re engaging in.
What other exhibitions are you looking forward to?
Ralph Lemon at MoMA PS1. He’s also in my show, and he’s a man I love dearly and I’ve worked with for a long time. He’ll have a solo show there.
There will be some exciting adjoining public programs and performances as a part of “Edges of Ailey.” What can we look forward to?
There’s so much to look forward to. One of the things I’m really excited about is the fact that the Alvin Ailey dance company is going to be in residence one week each month for a total of five weeks throughout the exbibition. Also Matthew Rushing, who’s the interim artistic director at Alvin Ailey right now, is going back in and pulling out all the sections of Revelations that Ailey removed. And he’s going to perform them as part of his project here, which is amazing. I can’t wait to see the sections that have been cut. I think it’ll be interesting because we really followed the spirit of Mr. Ailey in doing the performance program as a pendant to the exhibition. They’re inextricable from one another. In some ways, the exhibition is putting the museum experience in performance time.
What is one of your go-to restaurants for dinner?
Place des Fêtes. Often on Monday nights, they have guest chefs who come in. That’s fun. Their regular menu is also so amazing. I’m a true carnivore, but their veggies are amazing. They’re so inventive and super seasonal. Always unexpected flavors. Maybe the best bread I’ve ever had, and salted butter. Their wine selection is extraordinary, they have a really great Sauvignon. That’s my go-to.
What world was Alvin Ailey building?
On the one hand, I think we have clear evidence of a real commitment to the profundity of Black thriving against the odds. But despite everything, it’s music, it’s dance, it’s art, that is amongst many of the ways that we thrived. There is on one level, this question of Black life. And I think another thing that is not so articulated, but I might say arrives in the fold of Blackness, is also this question of queerness. Mr. Ailey could not be vocal in his life around sexuality. But let me tell you — you look at some of those stances, and for me, it’s undeniable that it’s there. So while he’s trying to build this — I don’t want to call it a perfect world, because if you look at the dances, they all have real entanglements around complex social issues, complex political and gender issues … it’s all there.
We have to realize that Blackness, as deep as it is and extensive as it is for him, is also a veneer. There are many other things right around identity that need to be liberated. And what Black liberation actually means is multivalent, much more so than I think that it’s often discussed as.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Correction: A previous version of this story stated that the Alvin Ailey dance company will be in residency at the exhibition every week. We have clarified that the company will be in residency once a week for a total of five weeks.