Alex Katz. Theater and Dance

Curated by Levi Prombaum, former Katz Consulting Curator, Colby College Museum of Art.

This exhibition offers an unparalleled opportunity to experience Katzʼs designs and creative process. It demonstrates how the central qualities of Katzʼs art—his radical sense of scale and cropping, his unrivaled study of light and color, his eccentric imagination and sense of humor—have taken shape and been reflected across two dozen or more dance and theater productions in New York and beyond.This is the first comprehensive exploration of Katz’s playful and inventive collaborations with choreographers, dancers, and members of avant-garde theater ensembles over six decades.

Artworks from the show are drawn from the comprehensive Alex Katz holdings at the Colby College Museum of Art, and complemented by unpublished, never before exhibited sketches from the artistʼs collection, major sets and paintings, and rare archival materials from Paul Taylor Dance Company, among other key loans attesting to the intertwined histories of painting and production design in Katzʼs career. In addition to presenting a range of works by innovators across the performing arts and poetry, it spotlights fifteen productions that Katz produced with Paul Taylor, exploring the creative partnership that produced some of the most significant postmodern dance of the twentieth century. 

Alex Katz: Theater and Dance is co-organized by the American Federation of Arts and Colby College Museum of Art, its 2022 presentation there was organized with curatorial guidance from Robert Storr.

More information: Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego