The Whitney show comprises works made with leading art world figures like Julie Mehretu, Carrie Mae Weems, Stan Douglas, Kara Walker and Glenn Ligon. “I was wondering: ‘Why are all these incredible artists linked to this one person?’” Adrienne Edwards, curator of performance at the Whitney and the exhibition’s chief creative architect, said in an interview. “He’s the common denominator, so I became interested in why.”

Mr. Moran and Ms. Edwards intend the exhibition as not just a welcoming of Mr. Moran’s creative conclave, but also as its own, living space . “It’s a solo show — ‘Jason Moran’ — but it’s also a group show,” Ms. Edwards said. “It was about how to keep all these things in the air and floating, as equal parts, in an exhibition format.”

Typically seeing a museum show might involve walking through a number of galleries, but in this one your relationship to space and time is turned sideways. The exhibition’s physical contents are mostly centered in one large room, yet because so many are music- and video-based, you spend a lot of time stationary, letting things play out, as if you were at a performance. And there will indeed be more performances. The stages here will be reactivated most weekends this fall by concerts from jazz groups selected by Mr. Moran. On Oct. 12, he will perform outside the museum on a giant, earsplitting calliope built by the visual artist Kara Walker, meant to evoke the horrors of slavery in the South, and on which Mr. Moran will play songs from the African-American canon.

The main gallery is dominated by the stage sculptures — three in all — which Mr. Moran created with help from fabricators. They are large-scale dioramas of the rooms that once existed at Slugs’ Saloon in the East Village, the Three Deuces in Midtown and the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem. On the gallery’s navy-gray walls, three large screens show videos and stills from Mr. Moran’s collaborations. The visuals run w ithout repeating for over two hours, and include footage of him working with Joan Jonas, Theaster Gates and others; video pieces he made with Ms. Walker, Ms. Weems and Lorna Simpson; and photos from his collaborations with others, accompanied by Mr. Moran’s piano playing, which wafts up spectrally from the Three Deuces’ baby grand (it has player-piano capabilities, so the keys are actually playing themselves).