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ICA teen educators talk about their experiences as teens.

Teen arts education is central to the ICA, but we also know being a teenager is no easy task. It is a time of both growth and uncertainty. So, we asked our teen education staff look back on their experiences as teenagers and the lessons they’ve learned to get them where they are today!

Carlie Bristow as teenager

Carlie Bristow

Teen Programs Associate

“Listen to yourself more. Also, you are dope and beautiful.”

  1. What were you like as a teenager?
    Confused! I really had no idea where I fit in. I went to a small school in New Hampshire where sports were very important. However, I couldn’t run a mile if I had to and I always found myself in the art building. I fell in love with photography in high school and really found my passion of making things.
  2. If you could tell your teenage-self one thing what would it be?
    I would probably say, “Failure is ok. Low points are important. The universe will guide you. Listen to yourself more. Also, you are dope and beautiful.”

3. How was art important to you as a teenager?
Picking up a camera senior year of high school actually changed my life. No really, it did. At the time, I was applying to liberal arts colleges with no idea what I wanted to study. After I began to take pictures and learn about art history, I decided last minute to apply to art school. I ended up studying (and devoting the rest of my life) to art. Discovering art was the best thing that ever happened to me. It has led me to some of the best people and places – including the ICA!
 

Cliften Bonner-Desravines as a teenager

Cliften Bonner-Desravines

Teen New Media Program Associate

Chill out…no one cares that you like David Bowie AND Tupac at the same time. 

  1. What were you like as a teenager?
    I was a total jock who was a big softie on the inside that liked to play piano and sing in choirs. Basketball took over a majority of my life, but my secret life was filled with all kinds of art, until I got to college and made it more of a full-time thing.
  2. If you could tell your teenage-self one thing what would it be?
    Chill out…no one cares that you like David Bowie AND Tupac at the same time. 
  3. How was art important to you as a teenager?
    It was my only other real release of self-expression. Because of my family, I got pulled into all kinds of art form. It showed me that I could do more with myself and my thoughts. 

Anthony Febo as a teenager

Anthony Febo

Head Coach of ICA Slam Team

I decided I was going to be happy for a living.
 

  1. What were you like as a teenager?
    In high school I was a hip-hop artist but I was also on the wrestling team. I feel like holding simultaneous identities has always been a part of me but it wasn’t until high school that I allowed them to shine.
  2. If you could tell your teenage-self one thing what would it be?
    Join a youth organization. Experience more art. Poetry Slam is a thing, DO IT! Romantic relationships are great, but explore relationships without making them romantic. 
  3. How was art important to you as a teenager?
    I made music. It was bad but I had fun and it paved the way for the rest of my life. I discovered that being on stage made me happy and I decided I was going to be happy for a living.

Gabrielle Wyrick as a teenager

Gabrielle Wyrick

Associate Director of Education

Be kinder to yourself.
 

  1. What were you like as a teenager?
    A study in extremes.
  2. If you could tell your teenage-self one thing what would it be?
    Be kinder to yourself.
  3. How was art important to you as a teenager?
    Essential for survival.

 

Emmanuel Oppong-Yeboah as a teenager

Emmanuel Oppong-Yeboah

Assistant Coach of ICA Slam Team

Like actually, things are going to be okay. Like you have a lot of learning to do, and growth, and it’ll be great I promise.

  1. What were you like as a teenager?
    I think just generally I had a lot to figure out still when I was a teen. I don’t know, I was growing into myself, I guess. I had spent most of middle school as this awkward chubby kid, and I had this growth spurt in high school, and was literally figuring out how to negotiate life now in this very different body, while still also doing high school, and friends, and social things. Everything felt really hard. Everything still feels kind of hard, but I was definitely a lot less sure of myself then.
  2. If you could tell your teenage-self one thing what would it be?
    “BRUH, chill…” Like actually, things are going to be okay. Like you have a lot of learning to do, and growth, and it’ll be great I promise, but for now, chill – shoot your shot, there’s plenty of life ahead. “Also PSTTT…don’t buy into forms of toxic masculinity. Everyone should be a feminist. Look up intersectionality. Shout out to Audre Lorde, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Lucile Clifton *Insert Lazers* Let me grab one of mom’s meat pies before I go. Kaythanksbye.” 
  3. How was art important to you as a teenager?
    I was a voracious reader when I was a teen; as in most likely not to be paying attention in Latin class because I had my head in a book. Me and my close friends would get together on weekends and just watch movies. I was really dedicated to curating my “aesthetic.” I rolled up my pants and wore colorful socks. I had tumblr before tumblr was tumblr, and reposted EMOTIONAL poems and stuff. I memorized poems and waxed poetic about love. I FELT THINGS, and struggled to communicate them, and so wrote sort of angsty poems – yeah, that was basically my thing. 

Up close with theater director Lars Jan

Theater director Lars Jan describes his multimedia performance The Institute of Memory (TIMe) as a work about “how the future of remembering is changing right now,” told through the story of his father, a “Cold War operative and privacy-obsessed misanthrope.”

It was an examination of Polish theater director Tadeusz Kantor, and his “obsession with personal history, shards of memory, reams of the forgotten, the archiving of ephemera” that led American director Lars Jan to examine his own past. “The inquiry started with trying to understand what happened to my dad,” says Jan, who grew up in Cambridge and Marshfield. “Why did he become the way he was? Why was he such an enigma? Why was he so paranoid?” Jan’s explorations led him from records in Cambridge City Hall and Massachusetts General Hospital to a bunker of state-gathered surveillance in Poland called The Institute of National Memory. Along the way, Jan developed his own deep interests in ideas of privacy and of archiving, fueled by Edward Snowden’s NSA revelations and by becoming a father himself and considering how the nature of his daughter’s remembering may differ from his own.

As he learned more about his father’s experience, the work shifted from exploring his paranoia to “questioning whether paranoia’s really the right word for it,” Jan says. Born in Poland, Henryk Ryniewicz was a Polish resistance fighter during World War II who moved to Cambridge after the war to take a position at what would become Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Jan had little contact with him in his later life and only learned of his mental decline and death in 2009 18 months after the fact.

“My father was a teenager during World War II, he was in the Polish resistance, his grandfather was killed in the massacre around the fifth day of the war, his country was subsumed by Stalin. Basically, history was very unkind to him and he had incredible experience with being surveilled. He was also tortured in the Polish resistance, so his ability to trust other people was formed by real experiences. For him to postulate that those experiences could happen again, if those people might still be watching, that those people might still be after him…Paranoia indicates an unreasonable degree of caution or concern, but he wasn’t wrong, given his life experience.”

On visits to Poland for theater festivals and research, Jan would talk about his enigmatic father to people he met, and “what was really interesting was that as I described the little that I knew, so many people said, ‘well this is like an archetypal Polish man of the 20th century; this is somebody that we all have in our family in one way or another.’ They really recognized his deep distrust of information and guarding of his personal information, the broken post–World War II traumatic mental state, his inability to connect with others.”

They recommended Jan seek information from the Institute of National Remembrance, which he describes as “a fascinating archive that was started by the Nazis and the taken over by the Soviet Secret Police” and that is comprised “mostly of hearsay, of what the neighbor said this other guy was doing,” but also contained the “extreme surveillance apparatus that was trying to control the population.” Covering the period from 1939 to 1989, the archive is now open to journalists and historians, and Jan was able to get materials on his father through a Polish proxy, two packages of more than a hundred pages each. One covered a visit to Poland in 1958, when Ryniewicz was trailed and his contacts investigated. The second was reported from Cambridge in the late 1960s by multiple spies living there with code names.

Inspired by Kantor, whose work experimented with representing memory, Jan’s genre-bending (TIMe) considers how archiving, from bureaucratic record-keeping to personal memory preservation, has shifted from analog to digital, how “a picture from the 70s looks different from a picture from the 80s, or from the 90s,” how immersing yourself in a box of faded Polaroids under your bed is different from searching through thousands of jpegs saved on your computer. It also looks at “structures of surveillance and privacy and power as a global question.”

Bringing the work to Boston—his first performance in his hometown—feels resonant, Jan says. “Whenever I’m in Cambridge, I always go back to visit his apartment, which was on Oxford Street.” He also plans to take his daughter to see the rhinoceros sculptures at Harvard that his father would take him to play on as a boy, which feature in the design of the show, and to visit his father’s grave in the Cambridge Cemetery, unmarked.

“Even though I kept him at arm’s length and hadn’t been that exposed to him a lot of my life, I realized that the void of him, the massive space that he protected and all the secrets that he had kept around all of my family and the rest of his life was a void that actually left a very large impression on me,” Jan says. “I formed my identity in part around the contours of that void.”

 

ICA staff share their recommendations for the best music, film, shopping, but mostly ART to check out this summer.

ART

  • Common Exchange
    Through Sep 30, 2017
    Cambridge Common
    I’m looking to soak up as much sunshine as I can this summer, so outdoor art installations are especially intriguing. Common Exchange is a summer-long set of installations and performances around “The Common,” a historic park outside side of Harvard Square where George Washington is noted to have assembled troops during the Revolutionary War in the 1770s. I’m excited about many projects, especially Carmen Papalia’s visionless walking tours, Allison Smith’s colonial-era crafting workshops, and Kelly Sherman’s banners presenting individuals’ recollections of personal events that happened on the common. I’m marking my calendar to take part in as many as possible.
    —Ruth Erickson, Mannion Family Curator
  • STAND UP: All Women* Group Exhibition at Gallery Kayafas
    July 10 – July 13
    Gallery Kayafas

    I can’t wait for this exhibition, chock full of fantastic female and gender-nonbinary artists from around town, many of whom have shown at the ICA, worked here, or otherwise crossed our path. It’s short—only 4 days—but looks mighty, taking on tough issues especially top-of-mind these days, such as class, race, identity, representation, power, and privilege.
    —Kris Wilton, Associate Director of Creative Content and Digital Engagement

  • Expanding Abstraction
    Through Sep 17, 2017
    decordova sculpture park
    The deCordova has a lovely outdoor rambling space in their sculpture park that’s great for folks of all shapes and sizes. Now on view they have an exhibition called Expanding Abstraction: New England Women Painters, 1950 to Now, which I found intriguing as it depicts the lesser-known history of abstract painting in New England.
    —Fabienne Keck, Curatorial Department Coordinator
  • The Meeting House
    Rose Kennedy Greenway
    The Rose Kennedy Greenway is always fun to stroll down, and I can’t wait to enter Mark Riegelman’s recently installed, topsy-turvy meeting house. Its colonial and ochre-yellow shape sunken into the grass is striking.
    —Ruth Erickson, Mannion Family Curator
  • Into the Light
    Through 2017
    MASS MoCA
    I made my first trip to MASS MoCA a couple weeks ago and already can’t wait to go back! The converted factory campus is beautiful to walk around and perfect for a picnic. The highlight of the day was by far James Turrell’s new exhibition, Into the Light–the galleries were specifically constructed to house his sculptural light installations and I’ve never seen anything like it. Perfectly Clear, one of the bigger installations that requires advance reservations, is a must-see and totally mind-blowing.  
    —Kate Ryan, Events Manager
  • Glass Flowers
    Harvard Museum of Natural History
    Harvard’s Natural History Museum’s famous glass flowers exhibit was recently renovated and presents an incredible selection of their glass models of plants and flowers. A fun, family-friendly exhibit, these almost true-to-life objects are a marvel! 
    —Jessica Hong, Curatorial Associate
  • An Inventory of Shimmers: Objects of Intimacy in Contemporary Art
    Through Jul 16, 2017
    MIT List Visual Arts Center
    This compelling group exhibition at MIT’s List Center looks at artworks that engage with the nebulous concept of affect—one that is bracingly urgent to explore as we consider shifting capacities for intimacy and empathy in our present moment.
    —Jeffrey De Blois, Curatorial Associate
  • The Philosophy Chamber
    Through Dec 31, 2017
    Harvard Art Museums
    When inside, I’m looking forward to being enchanted by The Philosophy Chamber at the Harvard Art Museums, an exhibition of a now-defunct teaching cabinet—a collection of objects assembled between 1760 and 1820 to teach from and orate within. I’m intrigued by the many extractions and recontextualizations present within such an endeavor as well as the deep intertwining of knowledge that used to be the university. I’m looking forward to learning a lot.
    —Ruth Erickson, Mannion Family Curator

Music

  • Nite Jewel
    Jul 26, 8 PM
    ONCE Sommerville
    Ramona Gonzalez, who records as Nite Jewel, creates music that sounds equal parts the DIY ethos of Grimes, the icey-coolness of Jessy Lanza, and the 90’s R&B flare of Janet Jackson. She recently released a terrific new album, Real High, that is the perfect set of summer jams! Real High comes just a year after she released a stellar set of releases in 2016 including another solo album, Liquid Cool, and a collaborative EP with one of my favorite artists (Dam-Funk) as Nite-Funk.
    —Chris Hoodlet, Membership Manager
  • Boston GreenFest
    Aug 11–13
    Boston City Hall Plaza
    Boston GreenFest combines art of all mediums into one big multicultural music and environmental festival! The focus is creating a green/healthy world for everyone! I enjoy the music stage the most. The main stage acts like a world stage where performances from all over the world come to perform. The food choices represent many different cultures as well, and you will also find eco vendors that serve to educate (and exhibit services and crafts). Local artisans come together to create murals for the festival—it’s a lot of fun!
    —Angie Brutus, Admissions + Box Office Associate

Film

  • Gook
    The new movie Gook (a derogatory term for a Korean person) is about two Korean-American brothers in LA who own a store and befriend a young black girl, Kamilia, and explores their friendship in the context of the LA riots. As it’s the 25th anniversary of the LA riots, there has been increased attention in examining this time period and the heightened racial tensions in the city as well as throughout the country. Watch the trailer here. It has received critical acclaim and was shown at Boston’s recent film festival. It will have an August release, so check your local listings!
    —Jessica Hong, Curatorial Associate

Shop Till You Drop

  • City-Wide Friends Book Sale
    Aug 5, 10 AM–4 PM
    Boston Public Library
    My pick is the City-Wide Friends book sale at the Central Library in Copley Square. You never know what gems you’ll find among all the donated and withdrawn books, CDs, and records! The books are super cheap (most are $1–$2), and the money goes to supporting the library. So you can find some awesome books or music and contribute to a great cause!
    —Julie Streeter, Theater Production Manager

Out of State

  • Public Art Fund Open House
    Through Sep 24, 2017
    Doris C. Freedman Plaza, New York City
    I’m looking forward to experiencing the New York Public Art Fund’s Open House–a new commission by Los Angeles–based (but Boston-born!) artist Liz Glynn that explores distinctions between public and private space, opulence and access, design for the few vs. for the many. Doris C. Freedman Plaza is transformed into an open-air ballroom with scattered furnishings that evoke a grand Gilded Age residence but are cast in mundane concrete. Glynn invites the participation of visitors, who cannot help but think about the lack of accessible, affordable housing characteristic of today’s ever-stratified American urban centers.  
    —Katie Mayshak, Director of Development
  • We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965-1985
    Through Sep 17, 2017
    Brooklyn Museum
    I’m looking forward to going to New York City, more specifically to Brooklyn, to see the Brooklyn Museum’s We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–1985 because I’ve heard so many great things about this exhibition from friends near and far. In my mind, the stirring contemporary relevance of this show cannot be underscored enough!
    PRO TIP: If you can’t make it to Brooklyn this summer, catch this brilliant show at the ICA next summer from Jun 26 – Sep 30, 2018.
    —Fabienne Keck, Curatorial Department Coordinator

We sat down to talk about the digitalizing of photography, high heels, flying fish, looking with two eyes, air plants, and the journeys we’ve all made to get where we are today.

Houston-based artist and educator Bennie Flores Ansell creates bewitching installations that imitate organic swarms or storms overtaking gallery walls, while making use of discarded slide film, shadow, and hidden imagery only visible up close. This spring, the artist will take over the ICA’s Bank of America Art Lab with an interactive art installation inspired by her relationships to analog photography, current political events, the old trope “a fish out of water,” and her Filipina heritage. We sat down to talk with Ansell about the digitalizing of photography, high heels, flying fish, looking with two eyes, air plants, and the journeys we’ve all made to get where we are today.

You have said that your work is “revealing the photographic object with light.” Could you tell us a little bit about that?

There was an art historian from San Antonio, Frances Colpitt, doing a studio visit with me, and she noticed this image that I had pinned up – these two silhouettes of the backs of high heels. I saw that image on the back of a magazine and I scanned it in, blew it up, and would just look at it. She said, “Something’s happening here. What’s going on there?” And I said, “I don’t know I just liked it. I liked the form, I liked the color, I liked what was going on.” She said “Do something there.” So I started photographing high heel shoes. At the time my daughters were about 5 and 6. I thought about how they would wear my heel heeled shoes, sort of pigeon toed. So I started photographing them that way.  Then when I starting gridding them on the computer, and on the studio wall, they started looking like bugs and butterflies. I thought, “Well let’s print them on transparency film,” and I started making butterfly collections. Then I started installing them by the thousands on the wall.

It started with that project with the butterflies. The photograph is not the thing itself. I think about the evolution of photography a lot in my work, as well as the photographic object and how that’s going away. I am working on a body of work where I’m taking the analog discarded slide film, which is now trash, and I’m deconstructing it. I’m cutting off the sprocket holes on the bottom and the top and then I’m using them in installations on the wall. I’m also stringing them up to mimic compression.

I was thinking about sprockets being obsolete. The purpose of the sprockets was to move film through a camera, and now we don’t need that with digital. So I started cutting them up and blowing them around with a hairdryer, videotaping them, giving them movement again, sort of one last hurrah. It’s sort of sacrilegious for a photographer to touch film, but it feels good. And when I cut the sprocket holes – you can just stick your hands in. It feels nice to just touch them even though you’re not supposed to.

It’s interesting that there’s something on the negative, but then you are creating something very sculptural with them. It definitely invites people to experience the object in two different ways. Being far away and then coming close and observing.

Exactly, that is what I love about these installations. It’s a reverse pixilation. Usually when you’re up close you can’t see it. But with my work from far away you can’t see it. From up close you can tell what each individual image is. I find it exciting that that’s happening with the work.

What do you think about the relationship between photography and sculpture?

As a kid I used to love picture books where you could feel things. I think my work is very tactile; I’m a very haptic photographer. I do my work in the dark room, but I also need to something in the studio. I need to touch it, I need to manipulate it. I think installation work has done that for me. I’m able to create this space that gets walked into—something gets seen, and then something else gets seen. I really love that. The object of the photograph is now sculptural in some ways because it exists, it’s not just light on your screen. It’s something that’s out in the world.

As a kid I used to love picture books where you could feel things. I think my work is very tactile; I’m a very haptic photographer.

Tell us about what you’re planning for the Bank of America Art Lab at the ICA.

When I do an installation I have no preconceived idea of what I’m doing to do until I get there and see the lighting and the walls. When Monica Garza, ICA Director of Education, asked me to put a proposal together for this project, she said, “Just think about the word journey,” because of the other shows going on at the time, such as Nari Ward: Sun Splashed. I thought, “Well, the biggest journey I’ve taken in my life was from the Philippines to the United States when I was 6 months old.” I’m still an immigrant, even though I’m as American as anyone else. Thinking about that, and thinking also about everything that’s going on right now in politics, as well as the refugees being displaced, I thought, “Well, they’re sort of like fish out of water.” And then I thought, “There are fish that are comfortable being out of water.” I thought maybe I would do something with that.

The biggest journey I’ve taken in my life was from the Philippines to the United States when I was 6 months old.

I started doing some research and I found out that in the Philippines there a festival called “Bangsi.” That’s the Tagalog word for flying fish. I was thinking about what projects I could do that would be hands on, and whether visitors could make work in a way similar to what I do. Right now, I am making stencils out of wood with a laser cutter, so that kids can hold them and see the shape. There will be three sizes, and from April to September visitors to the ICA will use them to build this swarm. What I want them to do, in terms of thinking about how we’re all immigrants, is to write somewhere on their flying fish where their family first came from. I’m excited to see it take place. We’re also going to put lights on the installation, so shadows will be cast on the wall, which is a big part of my work as well.

What do you think is the role of art and artists during times of political duress?

I think we need to address things. I think we need to say something.  My work has always been about identity politics. I think I feel like I have been somebody of two halves. I look one way. I am the other way. I think about what’s projected onto me, that my English is good, whatever that means. I think that also has to do with all of my work, as well as the projected shadow. There’s a connection always with that too.

What inspires you in your day-to-day life?

I live in a historic home that has been modernized. My husband and I did a renovation of the house and in Houston this is very rare. It was built in 1885 and we did a renovation in 2000. It’s a lot of old and new. Again, the sort of thing with two halves. I love plants, I love flowers. I get a lot of joy from them. I’m into air plants now. It looks like one thing, but it’s something else, and they’re super tactile. So right now I’m getting a lot of joy from my home and my plants. And color. I just love color.

How did you know you wanted to be an artist?

My father is an architect. My mother is a Sunday painter. She is very much into fashion, into color. She would always point out, “look at that red,” or “look at the blue.” So I’ve always been keyed into color. They always took us to art museums, and we always looked at how things were made and designed.

Then I had a boyfriend when I was 19 who saved up money and went to Europe. So when I was 20 I said, “I’m going to do that.” I got a job waiting tables at a restaurant, and I’m glad I did, because I met my husband there. I went to Europe and at the time I thought I was going to be a Mass Communications major. I thought I wanted to be the next Connie Chung. When I was in Florence, I took this picture, I still have it. It’s these green shutters and I think my pink tank top and underwear hanging just drying in the sun, and it was just like, “Wow!” Plus, I was around all of this great art there too. It was hard not to get into that, to be inspired. I got back and took a class in MassComm, and was like “I don’t want to do this,” and I switched my major.

How do you envision younger visitors interacting with your work?

This thing about being an immigrant, how we all came from somewhere else – just to get them thinking about that. The fish out of water, and being or feeling displaced – maybe to think about that as well. I’d also like them to experience seeing the installation at different distances, which is what my work is about.

It’s interesting to think that when they’re writing where their family is from, it might bring out important or compelling conversations and stories.

They should ask. They should know that. Even if they’re 5 or 6, they should know where grandma and grandpa came from. They’re interested if you give it to them. They have an opinion. They are very conscientious about what is going on in the world.

 

#ICAwatershed

The ICA is delighted to announce that the we are expanding our artistic programming across the Harbor to a temporary site in the East Boston Shipyard and Marina. We are honored to be a part of the East Boston landscape, a community that has long championed the arts, public parks, and the waterfront.

The new space, called the Watershed, is projected to open in summer 2018, pending permitting and final design. We will present art and public programs in the new 15,000-square-foot space seasonally while continuing our regular programming in the Seaport year-round.

The Watershed will be a raw, industrial space for art unlike any other in Boston, where visitors can experience immersive projects by artists engaged with the site, space, and issues related to this unique location. In addition to a flexible space for art and programs, the Watershed will house an introductory gallery focused on the historic shipyard and a waterside plaza that will serve as a gathering place. Admission will be free for all.

“Boston’s waterfront and harbor are one of the most unique aspects of our City, and I’m pleased the ICA is supporting our creative community in this welcoming East Boston space,” said Mayor Martin J. Walsh. “The Watershed will offer Boston a new, engaging space for art and discovery, and I welcome their investment in Boston’s diverse artists, residents and visitors.” 

The Watershed represents an exciting and creative mode of growth for the museum. With this project, the ICA will make a cross-harbor connection that is central to our vision of art, civic life, and urban vitality. It takes art beyond our walls, building upon a decade-long history of public art projects that bring together landscape, history, and contemporary art. The new facility is a central component of the ICA’s recently completed five-year strategic plan, A Radical Welcome, designed to deepen the vibrant intersection of contemporary art and civic life in Boston.

We are thrilled to launch this exciting new journey and to create new opportunities for art and artists and to deepen the connection between the natural and cultural resources of Boston.   

Planning to see more art in 2017? Make new friends? Expand your horizons? Boost your creativity? We’ve got you covered. Check those resolutions off your list at the ICA!

1. See More

Visitor in from of Gallagher's Deluxe

This season at the ICA we’ve got the “powerful” (Boston Globe) collection exhibition First Light: A Decade of Collecting at the ICA, plus the thought-provoking The Artist’s Museum and a brand-new monumental installation by Gillian Wearing.

Pro tip: Up your Instagram game with inspiration from Rachel Harrison’s Voyage of the Beagle, which explores fine art, public art, and kitsch in an unexpected series of digital photos.

Plus don’t miss THREE new exhibitions opening in February:
 

2017 James and Audrey Foster Prize Exhibition
The 2017 prize and exhibition will feature the work of Boston-based artists Sonia Almeida, Jennifer Bornstein, Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel, and Lucy Kim—artists working at a national and international level whose work has received limited exposure in Boston.
 

MCQUEEN_Ashes.jpg

Steve McQueen: Ashes
A Venice Biennale standout by Academy Award–winning artist Steve McQueen makes its U.S. debut.

ICA Collection: New Acquisitions
With exciting new works, New Acquisitions continues to focus on the incredible growth of the collection in recent years. 
 

Learn More

2. GET OUT more

Grab your crew and head to the ICA for an evening of art and fun at our museum-wide party, held on the first Friday of every month! Looking for a more intellectual bent? Come by for ICA Gallery Talks led by scholars and other thinkers on second Sundays. Watching your wallet? The ICA is FREE every Thursday night from 5–9 PM, with free exhibition-focused free tours. 

People singing kareoke at the ICA

  • First Fridays: Ice Ice Baby
    All right stop, collaborate, and listen. Warm up this February at the ICA with 90s karaoke, a jumping dance party, a cozy cocktail, and, as always, some killer contemporary art.
  • ICA Gallery Talks
    Looking for a more intellectual bent? These conversations led by artists, scholars, and other creative professionals who share their perspectives on contemporary art at the ICA are offered the second Sunday of every month.

Let’s Dance

3. Explore More

Break out of the (white) box. 

Still from Bacon & God’s Wrath

Ottawa International Animation Festival
The Best of Ottawa 2016 is a collection of jury-awarded short films and fan favorites from the 40th anniversary edition of the Ottawa International Animation Festival, North America’s largest animation event

Sundance Film Festival Shorts
Including fiction, documentary, and animation from around the world, the 2016 program ranges from wild comedy to reflective poetry. The artistry and unforgettable stories will resonate with audiences long after they end.

Alessandro Sciarroni’s FOLK-S, will you still love me tomorrow
In FOLK-S, Sciarroni refines the Schuhplattler, a Bavarian folk dance whose title translates to “shoe batter,” to its most essential form, invoking a sense of playful experimentation and ritualized trance.

Meredith Monk and Anne Waldman
Two iconic women known for their mesmerizing stage presences join forces for a singular evening of music, movement, and poetry.

Get the Deets

4. play more

Visit the ICA with your nearest and dearest, whether kids or kids at heart. Have a wee one in tow? Create an engaging museum experience for even the littlest visitor with ICA Gallery Games, a free pack filled with activities and tips for looking at and talking about the art on view. And don’t miss special vacation week activities!

Parent and child making art in the Bank of American Art Lab

Play Date: Family Film Program
Don’t miss a variety of short films including animation, live action, experimental, and documentary films, as well as films made by kids from around the world. Showcase stories of your own with ICA Storyboards. Ready for more fun? Work with our visiting artist to create unforgettable images.

February School Vacation Week: Art and Archichtecture Adventures
Take in the art on view in our galleries. Explore our building—and use it as a giant viewing device! Work with your friends and family to construct small-scale architectural models of your own design (Tuesday to Thursday only) or participate in our NEW Bank of America Art Lab installation created in partnership with a Boston-based artist Susannah Lawrence.

Did we mention we’re FREE for kids? Children 17 and under ALWAYS get in free at the ICA!

Get the 411

5. Give More

Teen Convening 2015

Every visit to the museum, ticket sale, or ICA Store purchase supports contemporary art in Boston, family programs, and the ICA’s award-winning teen program, which serves thousands of young people every year. Contributions to the ICA, at all levels, have a lasting impact on the museum’s ability to share the art and artists of our time with Boston and beyond. 
 

Give Back

 

Bundle up for a seasonal stroll through the burgeoning Boston seaport.

Dewey Square Park

Hop off the Red Line at South Station and pop over to Dewey Square Park. Mehdi Ghadyanloo’s awesome trompe l’oeil Spaces of Hope currently holds court over the park – and is definitely a site worth seeing. Plus there are food trucks, weather permitting.

Dewey Square Park is between Congress Street, Summer Street, and Atlantic Avenue

The prolific artist has introduced us to the realm of public art possibilities…

The Huffington post

Gingerbread House

Pop into the Boston Society of Architects Space and enjoy eight gingerbread designs from teams of architecture and landscape architecture firms. (Then vote for your favorite!) Now in its fifth year, the Gingerbread House Design Competition is a fun and tasty way to highlight the delicious talents of Boston landscape and architecture firms. While challenging designers to explore a new medium, this sweet event also raises funds for community design programs of the BSA Foundation.

BSA Space is at 290 Congress Street, Suite 200

Fort Point Channel

A jaunt across the Fort Point Channel bridges (on Summer Street and Congress Street) gives a glorious view of the Boston Harbor, the city’s skyline, and Claudia Ravaschiere and Michael Moss’s fluorescent and jewel toned plexiglass work Shimmer activates the Congress Street Bridge spanning Fort Point Channel and changes the public perception of a familiar urban environment. The work was comissioned by FPAC.

Snack Time

Barrington Coffee

Need an excuse to warm up? We understand. The noted (and ICA staff fave) Flour Bakery is right around the corner and offers just the thing, their award-winning “fiery hot chocolate.” Rich chocolate with a pinch of chile powder and cayenne pepper makes for the perfect mix of sweet and spicy. Plus daily specials and irresistable treats are always available if you’ve worked up an appetite. (Cinnamon cream brioche, apple snacking spice cake, ginger molasses cookies, the list goes on…)

Flour Bakery is located off Congress at 12 Farnsworth Street

Impeccable espresso more up your alley? Barrington Coffee Roasting Company is less than a block away and at your service. Their menu is simple, their coffee is prepared fresh each day, their beans are sustainable, and the quality is incomparable.

Barrington Coffee Roasting Company is located at 346 Congress Street

SHOP LOCAL

A foolproof spot to find last-minute gifts – or reward yourself for making it through 2016 – Made in Fort Point provides art and crafts by local artists. Offerings range from paintings and ceramics to jewelry and clothing, all made hyper-locally in the Fort Point neighborhood. Nothing like guiltless gifting.

Made in Fort Point is located at 315 A Street. The store is run primarily by volunteers, so hours may vary.

Daily Dose of Art

Of course no Seaport stroll is complete without a trip to the ICA/Boston. Whether you’re trying to work off those wintry treats, get your holiday shop on, entertain the family, or opt for art – stick with us this season:

KIDS_Kid making art inside at the ICA

Holiday Vacation Week Programs – Explore the galleries and create art together in the Bank of America Art Lab with art-making activities for visitors of all ages, children and adults, to enjoy. Pop-up art investigations related to works on view will also be offered on select afternoons.
Tue, Dec 27–Fri, Dec 30 | 10 AM–4 PM

First Light: A Decade of Collecting at the ICA – 10 years of collecting. 5 curators. More than 100 works. The ICA’s most ambitious collection exhibtion is now on view. Discover the work of Louise Bourgeois, Paul Chan, Shepard Fairey, Cornelia Park, Kara Walker, Andy Warhol, and more.Through Jan 16, 2017

RACHEL HARRISON Voyage of the Beagle

The Artist’s Museum – Check out the ICA’s newest exhibtion, The Artist’s Museum. How do artists work with other artists’ work? Come find out. Through Mar 26, 2017

Material Matters – See how contemporary artists transform our experience of found and everyday materials with a knowledgable tour guide. OR explore on our own terms with our new Mobile Guide. Thursdays at 6 PM, Saturdays and Sundays at 1 PM

And of course, be sure to the waterfront view from the John Hancock Founders Gallery while you’re here!

The ICA/Boston is located at 25 Harbor Shore Drive

SHOP LOCAL REDUX

ICA Store

Before you leave the ICA, don’t forget to visit the ICA Store for the perfect present or accessory you never knew you desperately need: we’re talking special products designed in collaboration with ICA exhibited artists, the best selection of art and photography books in New England, and home items intended to improve – and beautify! –everyday living. Bring the delights of contemporary art home. Admission is not required to shop at the ICA store. But, proceeds from the ICA store DO support the ICA’s exhibitions and programs. Give back while you give!

Explore the ICA store within the ICA at 25 Harbor Shore Drive.

Chow Circuit

There are too many incredible restaurants in the area for us to recommend just one. Here are a few of our favorites for a mid-walk meal, whether you’re looking for a feast, snack, or something simple.

Pastoral

Pastoral: Stunningly good artisanal pizza in a lovely setting (or to take out).

Pastoral is located at 345 Congress Street

Shake Shack: Something delicious for everyone – even your pickiest eaters. We’re partial to the classic ShackBurger with fries. Pro tip: Get the Seaport Salt & Malt concrete, made with dark chocolate chunks from Taza.

Shake Shack is located at 77 Seaport Blvd

Yo! Sushi: Brand new to the neighborhood, this is conveyor belt sushi at its finest, with both hot and cold offerings. Try one of everything.

Yo! Sushi is located at 79 Seaport Blvd

Legal Harborside: A spectacular view of the harbor with three floors of dining that each offer a different menu. (Psst…the 3rd floor has sushi, a fireplace, and a fully enclosed glass-walled space.)

Legal Harborside can be found at 270 Northern Avenue

The Barking Crab Boston

Row 34: Oysters. Beer. Repeat. You’ll be tempted not to stray from the raw bar, but the entire menu is top-notch.

Row 34 lives at 383 Congress Street

Blue State: Perfect for a quick bite (think sandwiches, scones + soups) AND they donate a percentage of sales to local nonprofits.

Blue State is located at 155 Seaport Boulevard

The Barking Crab: You might know it only from the summer outdoor party scene, but the Crab also has a cozy indoor section that feels like an escape in wintertime. Sit by the wood-burning oven and sip on a seasonal brew.

The Barking Crab is located at 88 Sleeper Street

 

This Saturday at Community Day we asked you to show some love for your favorite work in First Light: A Decade of Collecting at the ICA with Hearts for Art, and the results are in! Here are your top 11 favorite works (there was a tie for 10th!), with Cornelia Parker’s Hanging Fire (Suspected Arson) taking the lead by almost 100 votes!

The best part? You can come and visit them for a few more weeks! First Light will be on view through Jan 16, 2017.

(Also snagging some sneaky votes were the view from the John Hancock Founders Gallery, Gillian Wearing’s Rock ‘n’ Roll 70, and several works on view in The Artist’s Museum.)

Miss the fun? Share your favorite work in our collection at @icainboston on Twitter or @icaboston on Instagram! Explore the collection virtually here.

 

 

STORE_Black Friday 2016

Get 15% off your online purchases at the ICA store this weekend (+ Monday!). Head to icastore.org for easy access to endless treats and use the code ICA15. Not to mention, spend $100 or more on in-store jewelry purchases and receive 20% off. PLUS all proceeds support the ICA exhibitions and programs. Help us, help you.

Discount starts Friday, Nov 25 at 12am and lasts through Monday, Nov 28 at 11:59PM.