An Immersive Exhibition at The Church Celebrates the Work of Martha Graham

The Church will open its 2026 season with “Martha Graham: Collaborations,” a sweeping exhibition curated by Oliver Tobin that illuminates the visionary choreographer’s most influential artistic partnerships. The exhibition will open with a reception on Saturday, January 17, from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m., and will remain on view through March 22. The artists featured will include Martha Graham, Isamu Noguchi, Aaron Copland, Jean Rosenthal, Donna Karan, Halston and more than 100 dancers.

Martha Graham once said, “I think the reason dance has held such an ageless magic for the world is that it has been the symbol of the performance of living.”

“Martha Graham: Collaborations” coincides with the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Martha Graham Dance Company, which served as The Church’s first artists in residence, and it examines the company’s history through its collaborative processes. These partnerships produced groundbreaking innovations in dance, sculpture, stage design, lighting and musical composition.

The multimedia exhibition will feature original sets by Isamu Noguchi, costumes by Donna Karan, Halston and Graham, audio and visual presentations highlighting the contributions of composer Aaron Copland and lighting designer Jean Rosenthal, and performance and interview footage with generations of dancers. Archival photographs, texts and films will further illuminate this history. The exhibition will explore the “performance of living” embodied in Graham’s work through the stories, forms and creative achievements shaped by her vision and the artists who worked alongside her.

Curated by Oliver Tobin and commissioned for The Church from a concept by Sheri L. Pasquarella, the exhibition and its design is a collaboration among Tobin, Pasquarella and Joe Jagos, exhibition coordinator at The Church, with contributions from graphic designers Virginia Edwards and Maria Lavazzo.

Tobin said the exhibition “celebrates Martha Graham’s legacy as a profoundly influential and collaborative force — an artist whose work was shaped and sustained by the dancers who embodied her ideas and the composers, designers and thinkers who elevated and inspired her,” and he added that “their shared authorship forged a modern language that remains vital across generations and continues to reverberate a century later.”

Tobin’s curation will include a timeline and a series of essays presented as informational text throughout the exhibition. Tobin is a former dancer with the Martha Graham Dance Company, where he performed in seminal works including “Appalachian Spring,” “Clytemnestra,” “El Penitente,” “Embattled Garden” and others. In 2016, he was appointed director of Martha Graham Resources, where he led the preservation and stewardship of the company’s archive, spanning materials from 1894 to 2021, including costumes, production designs, photographs, ephemera and personal items. He facilitated the archive’s relocation to the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center and implemented a digital archive to broaden access and support licensing for theaters, museums, academic institutions and media. He has curated and produced Graham-focused exhibitions for Google Arts & Culture, SFMOMA and Museum Folkwang, and he also has an extensive background as an actor, dancer, educator and facilitator.

Martha Graham is recognized as a primal artistic force of the 20th century. Time named her “Dancer of the Century,” and People magazine named her among the female “Icons of the Century.” As a choreographer, she was both prolific and complex, creating 181 ballets and a dance technique often compared to ballet in its scope and influence. Her approach revolutionized dance and theater, and her physical vocabulary has influenced the field worldwide. Graham’s artistic legacy has been compared to the Moscow Art Theatre and Japan’s Grand Kabuki Theatre for its diversity and breadth, and her legacy continues through performances by the Martha Graham Dance Company, Graham 2 and the students of the Martha Graham School.

She founded her dance company and school in 1926, working out of a small Carnegie Hall studio in Manhattan. In developing her technique, she experimented with basic human movement, beginning with contraction and release. Graham’s ballets drew inspiration from modern painting, the American frontier, Native American ceremonies and Greek mythology. Many of her most important roles depicted women of history and myth, including Clytemnestra, Jocasta, Medea, Phaedra, Joan of Arc and Emily Dickinson. Graham conceived her works holistically, uniting choreography, costumes and music. Over 70 years she collaborated with sculptor Isamu Noguchi, actor and director John Houseman, fashion designers Halston, Donna Karan and Calvin Klein, and composers including Aaron Copland, Louis Horst, Samuel Barber, William Schuman, Carlos Surinach, Norman Dello Joio and Gian Carlo Menotti. Her company trained future choreographers such as Merce Cunningham, Paul Taylor and Twyla Tharp, and she created roles for ballet stars including Margot Fonteyn, Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov. She taught at The Neighborhood Playhouse, working with actors such as Bette Davis, Kirk Douglas, Madonna, Liza Minnelli, Gregory Peck, Tony Randall, Anne Jackson and Joanne Woodward. Graham earned numerous honors, including the Laurel Leaf of the American Composers Alliance in 1959, the 1986 Local One Centennial Award for Dance, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1976 and the National Medal of Arts in 1985.

Oliver Tobin is a former dancer with the Martha Graham Dance Company, where he performed in landmark works including “Appalachian Spring,” “Clytemnestra,” “Diversion of Angels,” “El Penitente” and “Embattled Garden.” He is a certified regisseur of Graham’s repertory and has staged works such as “Celebration,” “Episodes,” “Panorama,” “Maple Leaf Rag” and “Diversion of Angels,” and he choreographed a reimagined version of Graham’s “American Document” in 2019. In 2016, Tobin was appointed director of Martha Graham Resources, where he oversaw the company’s archive from 1894 to 2021 and facilitated its relocation to the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. He developed the company’s digital archive and curated exhibitions for Google Arts & Culture, SFMOMA and Museum Folkwang. His work in arts education and cultural diplomacy includes directing Teens@Graham, teaching at Adelphi University, LaGuardia High School, Kaatsbaan Cultural Park and the Martha Graham School, and serving as a cultural ambassador with Battery Dance Company in Germany and Africa. He is based in Brooklyn, New York, and is the founder of Homorganized, a home and business organization company.

The exhibition will be held at The Church, 48 Madison Street, Sag Harbor. More information is available at thechurchsagharbor.org.