This painting by American artist Emma Amos channels two iconic Black woman dancers. Judith Jamison first joined Alvin Ailey Dance Theater in 1965 and took over as artistic director of the company following Ailey’s death from AIDS-related illness in 1989, at 58 years old. (Jamison is also depicted in the show in Karon Davis’s white-plaster sculpture Dear Mama, made in 2024.) Josephine Baker, the iconic Jazz Age entertainer, was committed to civil rights activism alongside her dance career—a pairing not out of place for a show dedicated to Alvin Ailey.
Benny Andrews, The Way to the Promised Land, 1994
You can feel the raw emotion in the artist and activist Benny Andrews’s stylized paintings. The stark whites, shadows, appliqued fabric, and elongated lines elicit an intense longing. Part of the artist’s Revival series, the painting revisits memories of the Baptist church of the artist’s youth in Georgia. (Ailey’s family was also Baptist, and he recalled sneaking off to church to watch adults dance as a formative memory of his youth).
Romare Bearden, Bayou Fever Series, 1979
“There’s so much music in Romie’s work,” Ailey once said of artist Romare Bearden, his friend and collaborator. The 21 collaged works on view in “Edges of Ailey” are from Bearden’s Bayou Fever series, from 1979, which were intended as sketches for a ballet to be choreographed by Ailey. The performance never materialized, but the artworks remain beautiful examples of Bearden’s vivid imagination.
Geoffrey Holder, Portrait of Carmen de Lavallade, 1976
