Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes (1901–1967) held friendships with artists across generations and disciplines. He forged connections between creative professionals, encouraged the work of others, and helped build a larger network of Black creatives and intellectuals responding to, and shaping, the current events of the time. Among them were Arna Bontemps, Zora Neale Hurston, Dorothy West, Regina Andrews, Margaret Danner, Louis Armstrong, Randy Weston, and Roy DeCarava. The photographs in this exhibition offer an intimate look at Langston Hughes with students, writers, visual artists, and performers in different periods of their maturation. 

One friendship began in the classroom at Atlanta University when photojournalist Griffith Davis (1923–1993) was a student and Hughes a visiting professor. After graduating from Morehouse College in 1947, Davis became the first Roving Editor of Ebony magazine at the recommendation of Hughes. In 1948, Davis attended the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and rented a room in Hughes’ Harlem home on East 127th Street. Davis used Hughes’ home as a base while working as an international freelance photojournalist. Hughes used Davis’s marriage to Muriel Corrin Davis in 1952 as the basis for Simple Takes a Wife of his Simple series.

Multiple professional collaborations emerged from the mentorship, as did an enduring friendship. In this exhibition, Griff Davis’s photography is complemented by archival material from the Schomburg Center’s collections and letters reflecting decades of personal correspondence. 

The exhibition The Ways of Langston Hughes and its text are adapted from the traveling exhibition Griff Davis-Langston Hughes, Letters and Photographs, 1947 – 1967: A Global Friendship, originated at the Florida Museum of Photographic Arts.

Edges of Ailey is the first large-scale museum exhibition to reflect on the life, work, and legacy of visionary artist Alvin Ailey (b. 1931, Rogers, Texas; d. 1989, New York, New York). Widely recognized for the dance company he founded in 1958, Ailey imagined and cultivated a platform for modern dance through his innovative repertoire, interdisciplinary sensibility, and support of other dancers and choreographers. Presented in the Museum’s 18,000+ square-foot fifth-floor galleries, this multifaceted presentation encompasses a multimedia exhibition, daily performance program, and scholarly catalogue to offer a richly layered experience for understanding the artist anew. 

Edges of Ailey will showcase an ambitious daily program of live performances, including works from the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater repertory and new commissions as well as workshops, classes, and panels. The exhibition situates Ailey within a broader social, creative, and cultural context, illuminating the artists who influenced and collaborated with him, the spaces and scenes he frequented, and the dynamic themes explored within his dances through painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, film and video, rehearsal footage, ephemera, and other archival materials. 

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