Alex Katz art exhibition to make next stop in La Jolla

Venturing from its decades-long roots in New York, the work of renowned artist Alex Katz is making its way across the country in a touring exhibition that soon will be in La Jolla.

“Alex Katz: Theater and Dance” is set to debut at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego on Thursday, Aug. 21, and run through Sunday, Jan. 4.

The exhibition, first organized by the Colby College Museum of Art in Maine in tandem with the American Federation of Arts, gives viewers a comprehensive look at Katz’s many collaborations with choreographers, dancers and members of avant garde theater ensembles.

The Brooklyn-born Katz, now 98, began his rise to prominence in the early 1950s.

The “Theater and Dance” exhibit includes rare archival materials, a variety of paintings and sets, previously unseen sketches and more. It also pays homage to 15 productions Katz worked on with American dancer and choreographer Paul Taylor.

“Alex Katz: Theater and Dance” represents Amy Crum’s first exhibition as MCASD’s associate curator since she joined the museum in June. Before that, Crum worked at The Museum of Fine Arts Houston’s department of Latin American and Latino art and gained curatorial experience at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the New Orleans Museum of Art.

Crum described Katz’s work as bold and emphatically figuration-focused at a time when popular art often was abstract. He often featured zoomed-in visions of everyday life.

Crum said she hopes that style will make for a unique addition to MCASD’s collection of abstract work.

“We have a number of artists like that in our collection, like [Robert] Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol, so we thought this was an opportunity to bring Katz to a West Coast audience in a way that people maybe wouldn’t have encountered him previously,” Crum said.

This will be the exhibition’s third destination, following The Baker Museum in Naples, Fla., and the Frye Art Museum in Seattle.

Katie Wright, a curator for the American Federation of Arts, praised “Theater and Dance” for its cross-disciplinary nature.

Wright said the process of bringing the exhibition to La Jolla started through a call from MCASD Chief Executive Kathryn Kanjo, who expressed interest in it.

“This seemed like a great opportunity given that there is a great performing arts and rich visual arts scene in San Diego that they can draw out with the show,” Wright said.

“‘Alex Katz: Theater and Dance’ offers an unparalleled opportunity to experience Katzʼs designs and creative process,” according to a statement on MCASD’s website. “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.”

Katz’s painting “Bill 2,” which was featured in a Murals of La Jolla installation in 2019, will be one of the art pieces in the exhibition.

Though the exhibit’s art is drawn from the Colby College Museum of Art’s collection of nearly 900 of Katz’s works, where it’s presented makes a difference, Wright said.

“The checklist basically remains the same, but it is pretty amazing to see how the same works look very different from space to space and are received differently based on audience interest,” she said.

“Some shows have very strict layout in terms of ‘This work needs to appear before this one.’ This show doesn’t because so many of Katz’s works cross-reference things he did 20, 30 years before. There’s many ways you can imagine the layout.”

Crum said the versatility of Katz’s work extends beyond where the pieces are placed.

“The exhibition is fun in that … yes, it’s painting, yes, it’s sculptures, but it’s also talking about movement and process and sustained collaborations and what happens when artists get together,” she said.

“Historically, contemporary art [and] modern art has talked about this very singular genius of one artist. And this is really highlighting … when artists come together, the kinds of amazing things that they create that don’t necessarily fit neatly within one category.”

The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego is at 700 Prospect St. To find out more about the museum and its exhibits, visit mcasd.org/exhibitions.