Gillian Wearing, Rock ‘n’ Roll 70, 2015. Framed c-type prints, 48 x 72 inches (121.9 x 182.9 cm). Courtesy the artist; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York; Maureen Paley, London; and Regen Projects, Los Angeles. (framed work); Background image: Gillian Wearing, Wallpaper, 2015. Wallpaper, dimensions variable. Courtesy the artist; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York; Maureen Paley, London; and Regen Projects, Los Angeles. © Gillian Wearing
Gillian Wearing (b. 1963, Birmingham, UK) has created Rock ‘n’ Roll 70 (2015/2016), a monumental, site-specific photographic mural for the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston’s Sandra and Gerald Fineberg Art Wall. On view from December 9, 2016 through January 1, 2018, this new work is the first presentation in Boston of the celebrated artist’s work and was organized by Eva Respini, Barbara Lee Chief Curator, with Jessica Hong, Curatorial Assistant.
Best known for her photographic and video works that intimately capture aspects of our familial and personal histories, Wearing began her career photographing strangers she encountered on London’s streets and continues to explore the nuances of identity, the intersections of public and private, and the performativity of self. Over her career, Wearing has also mined her own life and history, having meticulously sculpted masks of her loved ones and donned them to create eerie self-portraits as her brother, mother, or her own self at an earlier age.
For Rock ‘n’ Roll 70, Wearing asked individuals working with age-progressing technology to digitally enhance self-portraits created at age 50 (her current age) to see what she might look like at age 70. Printed as wallpaper, these aged portraits show the diversity of possibilities of the artist’s future self. They differ slightly or drastically from each other, revealing the limitations of what we believe to be pioneering technology, exploring how identity can be represented, and further emphasizing the uncertainty of what lies ahead.
On top of the wallpaper hangs a framed triptych of photographic portraits, consisting of Wearing at her current age, an enhanced portrait, and a blank space, as the artist intends to make a self-portrait when she turns 70 to complete the triptych. In a world oversaturated by images, particularly “selfies,” Wearing explores the complexities of identity mediated through technology, which is a topic that’s more urgent than ever.
The ICA’s Sandra and Gerald Fineberg Art Wall is dedicated to site-specific works by leading contemporary artists, commissioned annually. Located along the eastern interior wall of the museum’s glass-enclosed lobby, the most public space in the museum, the Art Wall is the visitor’s first encounter with art upon entering the building. Wearing’s photographic mural highlights the diverse range of possibilities for the Art Wall, a fitting site for this installation as it further collapses the public and private spheres. Rock ‘n’ Roll 70 will explore the lobby as a psychological space—the artist’s portraits are confrontational and alluring, discomfiting and thought-provoking.
Based in London, Wearing gained critical attention after winning the acclaimed Turner Prize in 1997. She was nominated for the Vincent Award presented by the Gemeentemuseum/GEM in The Hague, Netherlands (2014) and for the Liberty Human Rights Awards for her public sculpture A Real Birmingham Family (2014). Since the early 1990s, Wearing has been working primarily in video and photography, utilizing the public as her subject matter to investigate what we as private individuals carry with us in the public sphere. With the Internet boom and social media explosion, the public and private realms have all but collapsed. This has become a dominant theme for many contemporary artists and a significant issue for the culture-at-large. Wearing describes her methodology as “editing life,” similar to how we present ourselves to our online public. However, unlike reality culture of our day, which is full of judgment and emotive responses, the artist photographs her subjects and herself with as little subjectivity as possible, contrasting with the type of online personas we wish to portray.
Support was provided, in part, by Jean-François and Nathalie Ducrest and Area9 Group.
Installation view, Rosemarie Trockel: A Cosmos, New Museum, New York, 2012–13. Courtesy New Museum, New York. Photo by Benoit Pailley. © Rosemarie Trockel, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2016 resp. ARS
Press are welcome to preview the exhibition on Tuesday, Nov 15 between 10 AM and 1 PM. Please contact Lisa Colli, lcolli@icaboston.org, if you need additional information, images, or would like to visit the exhibition on November 15.
The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) presents The Artist’s Museum, an exhibition focused on the creative impulse to collect and connect, featuring work by twelve American and European artists, including a major new commission for the exhibition by Anna Craycroft, as well as by Rosa Barba, Christian Marclay, Rosemarie Trockel, Carol Bove, Rachel Harrison, Louise Lawler, Mark Leckey, Pierre Leguillon, Goshka Macuga, Xaviera Simmons, and Sara VanDerBeek. Occupying the West Gallery, The Artist’s Museum showcases artworks that combine appropriated images, pre-existing artworks, and collected artifacts to create unexpected relationships across cultures and history in installations, photography, film, and video. The exhibition is organized by Dan Byers, Mannion Family Senior Curator, with Jeffrey De Blois, Curatorial Assistant, the exhibition is on view from November 16, 2016 through March 26, 2017.
The desire to collect objects and images of personal significance and to make connections between them is a near-universal experience. Since the early 20th century, artists’ collections of artworks and artifacts have served as inspiration for and material in their work, helping them create highly individualized models of their worlds. The Artist’s Museum includes artworks that gather a wide variety of appropriated materials and images ranging from magazines and animated characters to postcards and curios. These artists are also influenced by the advent of search engines, the internet’s digital image and data saturation, and the networked culture that defines our digital age.
Jill Medvedow, Ellen Matilda Poss Director at the ICA/Boston, said, “Seeing the world through artists’ eyes and the objects the artists collect offers a window into our shared and different values and views of history, and our individual and collective selves. In The Artist’s Museum, Dan Byers, Mannion Family Senior Curator, has created a dramatic platform for all our visitors to experience the unique worlds and perspectives of twelve extraordinary artists.”
Byers said, “An ‘artist’s museum’ may not be a museum at all, but rather a conceptual approach to the creative organization of artworks and other objects to make sense of the world. The exhibition is about artists re-telling forgotten, hidden, or overlooked histories through cultural artifacts and images. Further, it reveals the secret lives of artworks and the personal relationships we all have with images and art. Each installation charts recurring forms and themes across cultures and history, subjecting artworks, images, and objects to new systems of relation and connectivity. They employ the language of museum display to engage many subjects, from dance, music, and design to gender, sexuality, and technology.”
An exhibition highlight is a major new ICA/Boston commission by Craycroft, The Earth is a Magnet (2016), the artist’s most ambitious work to date. Made up of more than 150 objects covering two small galleries, the work brings together the photography, biography, and inventions of Berenice Abbott—celebrated for both her street photography and her rigorously scientific images made at MIT—with video, sculpture, and photography by a peer group of younger artists. They include Fia Backström, Katherine Hubbard, Matt Keegan, Jill Magid, MPA, Lucy Raven, Mika Rottenberg, A. L. Steiner, and Erika Vogt. Other highlights include:
The presentation of The Artist’s Museum will be enriched by gallery talks and artist talks (details to be announced soon).
The Artist’s Museum is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with texts by Dan Byers, Mannion Family Senior Curator, ICA/Boston; Claire Bishop, art historian, critic, author, and Professor in the Art History Department at CUNY Graduate Center, New York; Lynne Cooke, Senior Curator, Special Projects in Modern Art, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC; and Ingrid Schaffner, Curator of the 2018 Carnegie International, Carnegie Museum of Art. Designed by Chad Kloepfer, The Artist’s Museum catalogue also includes a historical compendium of influential 20th-century artworks and exhibitions that provide important precedent to the works in this exhibition. Available for $49.95 at the ICA Store or online at icastore.org.
Major support is provided by Barbara Horwich Lloyd, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
Additional support is generously provided by Steve Corkin and Dan Maddalena, Tristin and Martin Mannion, Ellen Poss, Charlotte and Herbert S. Wagner III, Anonymous, FACE Foundation/ Etant Donnés Contemporary Art, and the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States.
Photo by Paula Court
Bill T Jones/Arnie Zane Company in Analogy/Lance. Photo by Eric Politzer.
Big Dance Theater in Short Form. Photo by Liz Lynch, courtesy of American Dance Institute (ADI)
Photo by Eric Politzer
The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) presents major premiere performances this fall: on October 14 and 15 at 8 PM, the Boston debut of five Big Dance Theater short works ($25 general admission; $15 ICA members + students); and on November 11 and 12 at 8 PM, and November 13 at 2 PM the return to the ICA of legendary choreographer Bill T. Jones for the U.S. premiere of A Letter to My Nephew ($40 general admission; $30 ICA members + students). Before each show there will be a 20-minute free talk to introduce the work, which will take place in the ICA lobby. All performances will take place in the Barbara Lee Family Foundation Theater at the ICA, 25 Harbor Shore Drive, Boston. Tickets can be purchased at www.icaboston.org or by calling 617-478-3103.
To celebrate Big Dance Theater’s 25th anniversary, artistic leaders Annie-B Parson—known for her work with David Bowie, David Byrne, and St. Vincent—and Paul Lazar theatrically reimagine the conventions of a repertory program. Inspired by disciplines of the concise—novellas, folk tales, diary entries, pencil drawings, thumbnail sketches—Big Dance performs five distinct short works, each a Boston premiere, that embrace the brief, granular, close-range, anecdotal, and microscopic. The first half of the show will focus on movement language and dance forms, while the second half will be more theater- and narrative-oriented. During intermission, one of the evening’s highlights, attendees will discover Big Dance’s unique blend of “dance theater” on an intimate scale with an onstage anniversary party, complete with hot dogs and beer. The company’s last project shown in Boston was its collaboration with Baryshnikov Productions on Man In a Case, featuring Mikhail Baryshnikov, at ArtsEmerson.
A Letter to My Nephew, Bill T. Jones’s latest work, makes its U.S. premiere in Boston and marks his return to the ICA for the first time since 2014. The work brings together two facets—the social/political and the deeply personal—and is based on the life of Jones’s nephew, Lance T. Briggs, a former dancer and model who was involved with drugs and prostitution before being paralyzed by illness. The emotional A Letter to My Nephew is a street scene or a still from the evening news that superimposes violent street battles in the U.S. and desperate immigrants rushing toward freedom in Europe over the image of a hospital bed untethered from reality. Composer Nick Hallett, baritone Matthew Gamble, and DJ Tony Monkey accompany the accomplished dancers of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company with a delirious mix of pop music, lullabies, house music, and more. Video design by Janet Wong turns the stage into a simulated battleground; through the fog, Jones’s words to his nephew come alive on stage.
First Republic Bank is proud to sponsor the ICA’s 2016–17 Performance Season.
Media Contact: Lisa Colli; 617-480-4664; lcolli@icaboston.org
The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) presents an extraordinary musical performance this fall on October 27. Australian singer/songwriter RY X (born Ry Cuming) will take center stage with his intimate, intuitive, and devotional songs composed with lush melodies and raw, emotional lyrics (8 PM; $20 general admission; $17 ICA members + students) in the Barbara Lee Family Foundation Theater at the ICA, 25 Harbor Shore Drive, Boston. Tickets can be purchased at www.icaboston.org or by calling 617-478-3103.
RY X will perform in support of his full-length debut album Dawn (released May 2016), which according to the New York Times “…floats in a gorgeous, dolorous haze.” The artist found commercial success with his single “Berlin,” which was used in a popular European advertising campaign for Sony TVs in 2013. He is also part of the electronic/house-influenced act Howling along with musician Frank Wiedemann, and is a member of the band The Acid with DJ Adam Freeland and composer Steve Nalepa. RY X often cites Jeff Buckley as one of his greatest influences and started writing music at 16 after discovering Buckley’s album Grace. In July 2010 as Ry Cuming he released a self-titled debut album, and briefly toured with Maroon 5, becoming their opening act in select venues.
First Republic Bank is proud to sponsor the ICA’s 2016–17 Performance Season.
Photo by Ryan C. McMahon
Initiative Highlights Notable Bostonians Revealing Their Own Personal Collections; Invites Public to Share Their Important Objects and Stories
Although many of us may not define ourselves as “collectors,” we all value and accumulate something. From ticket stubs and bottle caps to love letters, teacups, or records, many of us have a favorite object or things, something we hold dear. To celebrate this uniquely human behavior of collecting and connecting, the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) launches The Object Project, a community-wide initiative designed to encourage Bostonians to reflect on an object or objects of significance in their life and share them with the ICA and others through a photograph or video.
“Art is all around us, is an important part of our everyday lives, and The Object Project aims to showcase that,” said Jill Medvedow, Ellen Matilda Poss Director. “We want to hear from the community, we want to incorporate your voices: what you collect and why these collections are important to you.”
The Object Project kicks off with interesting insights into the personal collections of a diverse array of Bostonians including: Chef Jeremy Sewall of Island Creek Oyster Bar; Marcyliena Morgan, Executive Director of the Hiphop Archive at Harvard; Joyce Linehan, Chief of Policy for Mayor Marty Walsh; artists Rachel Perry and Caleb Cole; ICA teen and designer/editor Sienna Kwami; comedian and musician Angela Sawyer; gallery owner Camilo Alvarez; and musician Danny Mekonnen. These stories will be available at icaboston.org/objectproject.
First Light: A Decade of Collecting at the ICA (August 17, 2016 – January 16, 2017) – Coinciding with the tenth anniversary of the ICA/Boston’s move to its iconic waterfront building, this exhibition celebrates the museum’s first decade of collecting, is drawn entirely from the ICA’s collection, and features significant new acquisitions. Conceived as a series of interrelated and rotating stand-alone exhibitions, First Light highlights major singular works from the collection, including a monumental cut-paper silhouette tableau by Kara Walker, work from the Barbara Lee Collection of Art by Women, groupings of work by artists such as Louise Bourgeois and Nan Goldin, and thematic and art-historical groupings featuring the work of artists as diverse as Paul Chan, Sharon Hayes, Sherrie Levine, and Cornelia Parker. A new multi-media web platform with artist interviews and commentary from current and former curators was created to mark the occasion.
The Artist’s Museum (November 16, 2016 – March 26, 2017) – This exhibition departs from the impulse to collect and connect, bringing together photography, film, video, installation, sculpture, and sound works that use artworks, images, and history as material for new works. These multilayered projects reimagine the lives of other artworks, demonstrating how social history, personal connections, and ideology shape our relationships to objects, images, and the cultures they produce. Among the artists featured in The Artist’s Museum are: Rosa Barba, Carol Bove, Anna Craycroft, Christian Marclay, Xaviera Simmons, Rosemarie Trockel, and Sara VanDerBeek. Engaging the realms of dance, music, popular culture, natural history, image archives, and design–as well as art history–the twelve artists address a constellation of issues such as gender, sexuality, technology, and digital culture, charting forms and themes across cultures and through time.
First Light: A Decade of Collecting at the ICA is sponsored by
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Additional support is generously provided by Fiduciary Trust Company, Chuck and Kate Brizius, Katie and Paul Buttenwieser, Karen and Brian Conway, the Robert E. Davoli and Eileen L. McDonagh Charitable Foundation, Jean-François and Nathalie Ducrest, Cynthia and John Reed, and Charles and Fran Rodgers.
Major support for The Artist’s Museum is provided by Barbara Horwich Lloyd, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
Additional support is generously provided by Steve Corkin and Dan Maddalena, Tristin and Martin Mannion, Ellen Poss, Charlotte and Herbert S. Wagner III, Anonymous, and the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States.
Paul Chan, 1st Light, 2005. Projected digital animation (color, silent; 14:00 minutes). Gift of Kimberly and James Pallotta. Courtesy the artist and Greene Naftali. Photo by Jean Vong. © Paul Chan
ICA celebrates the tenth anniversary of its collection and signature waterfront building with an exhibition featuring works by Louise Bourgeois, Paul Chan, Eva Hesse, Cindy Sherman, Kara Walker, Andy Warhol, and many others.
Press are welcome to preview the exhibition on Tuesday, Aug 16 from 10 to 2 PM. Please contact Lisa Colli, lcolli@icaboston.org, if you need additional information, images, or would like to visit the exhibition on August 16.
The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) celebrates its first decade of collecting and the tenth anniversary in its Diller Scofidio + Renfro-designed facility with the largest and most ambitious presentation of its collection to date. First Light: A Decade of Collecting at the ICA features over 100 works by seminal artists of the 20th and 21st centuries, including Louise Bourgeois, Nick Cave, Paul Chan, Marlene Dumas, Eva Hesse, Cindy Sherman, Kara Walker, and Andy Warhol. Occupying the entirety of the museum’s east galleries, First Light combines audience favorites with new acquisitions, many on view at the ICA for the first time.
This exhibition is organized by the ICA’s curatorial department under the leadership of Eva Respini, Barbara Lee Chief Curator. First Light: A Decade of Collecting at the ICA is on view from August 17, 2016 to January 16, 2017. During the first week of October, midway through the presentation, there will be a rotation of some of the sections (or “chapters”) enabling more of the collection to be showcased and new works and juxtapositions to be explored.
“First Light: A Decade of Collecting at the ICA provides a window onto contemporary artistic practice through the ICA collection. This series of simultaneous exhibitions reveals the driving visions of curators and collectors, the social, political, material, and aesthetic concerns of contemporary artists, and the history of ICA exhibitions over the past many years,” said Jill Medvedow, Ellen Matilda Poss Director. “The exhibition celebrates a monumental ten years at the ICA and marks a historic transformation in our community. We are very grateful to our generous supporters who have allowed us to grow the collection significantly and strategically.”
Conceived as a series of interrelated and stand-alone exhibitions, First Light is organized into thematic, artist-specific, and art-historical chapters that each tell a different story. The first section features three major highlights of the exhibition. These are:
Other highlights include groupings of work by artists held in-depth in the collection including Louise Bourgeois, Rineke Dijkstra with Nan Goldin, and a gallery dedicated to objects from The Barbara Lee Collection of Art by Women. To accommodate the breadth of stories within the collection, several chapters will switch out halfway through the exhibition’s run. The Barbara Lee Collection of Art by Women and Soft Power galleries (described below) will be on view through January 16, serving as anchors to the overall exhibition.
A new, multimedia web platform at icaboston.org accompanies the exhibition and features descriptions of the works, interviews with artists, and commentary by current and former ICA curators reflecting on works that entered the collection during their tenure. The content-rich microsite will launch in tandem with the exhibition.
“In ten years, the ICA has established a collection of great variety, ranging from historically significant work of figures such as Eva Hesse and Louise Bourgeois to the contemporary explorations of leading artists such as Kara Walker and Paul Chan,” said Eva Respini, Barbara Lee Chief Curator. “The work in First Light represents a broad range of art-making today by artists who explore the issues of our time.”
First Light explores a diversity of narratives from biography and material to feminism and appropriation in the following sections or chapters.
On view August 17, 2016–January 16, 2017
The Barbara Lee Collection of Art by Women is the cornerstone of the ICA’s growing collection. The collection includes artists working in diverse media who have made significant contributions to art over the past 40 years. This exhibition is arranged by various media and subject matters, highlighting the collection’s strength in works of sculpture and assemblage, as well as drawing and painting. Included are signature works by Marlene Dumas, Ellen Gallagher, Ana Mendieta, Cornelia Parker, Doris Salcedo, Kara Walker, among others, in addition to salient historical precedents set by figures such as Eva Hesse and Louise Bourgeois. Together, these works examine issues of the political, personal, and social body, and larger concepts of identity, all in distinct and thought-provoking ways. This section demonstrates the strength of the ICA’s expanding collection and how the collection engages in critical discourses in the arts as well as broader social and cultural contexts. The Barbara Lee Collection of Art by Women is organized by Eva Respini, Barbara Lee Chief Curator.
On view August 17, 2016–January 16, 2017
Formed by pliable materials including rope, thread, string, and fabric, the works in Soft Power derive their presence and power from, on the one hand, the seductive textures, structures, and surfaces of textiles, and on the other, the evocative social and cultural connotations these materials provoke. The smears and patterns of Kai Althoff’s gloss paint on fabric conflate painting and body in a surreal clothing-like fragment in Untitled (2004), while Alexandre Da Cunha’s BUST XXXV (2012) lurks like a floating figure, shrouded in its uncanny cover of mop and string. Sculptures by Josh Faught, Françoise Grossen, Charles LeDray, and Robert Rohm—crocheted, knotted, and sewn—variously lean against the wall, sprawl, pile on the floor, and hang to evoke the body by its covering, adornment, and poses only possible through their shared soft construction. Soft Power is organized by Dan Byers, Mannion Family Senior Curator.
On view August 17–October 2, 2016
This exhibition explores the sphere of the domestic in the making and meaning of art. A counterpoint to such celebrated contexts as the artist’s studio and the public sphere, the home has often served artists, especially female artists, as a crucial site for the creation of their work. Artists in this exhibition derive inspiration from the objects, relationships, and aesthetics that surround them. Sherrie Levine, Doris Salcedo, and Diane Simpson reimagine mundane objects in their sculptural works; LaToya Ruby Frazier, Cindy Sherman, and Andy Warhol probe familial relations through their photographs; and Chantal Joffe and Mickalene Thomas offer striking paintings of intimate interior scenes. The title of this section is from a quote by Georges Perec, the great cataloguer of everyday life who challenged readers to scrutinize the ordinary. To “question your teaspoons” is to pay attention to—and bring new attention to—a quotidian thing, to study life in order to live it differently. Question Your Teaspoons is organized by Ruth Erickson, Associate Curator.
On view August 17–October 2, 2016
The ICA has rich holdings of works by Rineke Dijkstra and Nan Goldin, two leading figures in contemporary photography with a keen interest in portraiture. Both artists have a history with the ICA: the museum hosted Goldin’s first solo museum exhibition in 1985 and one of Dijkstra’s first surveys in the United States in 2001. Referencing both the historical genre of portraiture and documentary-style photography, these artists expound upon these traditions in divergent and unique ways. Goldin’s bold images depict her loved ones and closest acquaintances caught in intimate moments. From the artist’s mother laughing to a drag queen lounging at home, her compositions are vibrant and rich, powerfully emotive, and full of psychological intent. Dijkstra’s stark portraits, on the other hand, present the subjects in heightened focus and repose, stripped bare of context. The artists subtly and overtly examine the shifting nature of identity and self. Goldin’s captures an instant within a broader narrative, expressing her subjects’ personal relationships or exploring their gender identities, while Dijkstra’s subjects, including new mothers and children growing into adolescence, are at the cusp of unpredictable chapters in their lives. These works, ultimately capturing everyday moments, encourage the viewers to intimately engage with the pictured subjects, and to seek out clues of their personal lives and character, reflecting our own searches for the extra in the ordinary and the thrill in the mundane. Rineke Dijkstra / Nan Goldin is organized by Jessica Hong, Curatorial Assistant.
On view October 8, 2016–January 16, 2017
The Freedom of Information is a concise survey of artworks that employ strategies of appropriation, from repurposing and rephotographing mass-media images to referencing and copying objects from art history or American consumer culture. While key moments in the history of artistic appropriation (such as the readymade, collage, and montage) date back to the early 20th century, it was in the 1970s and 80s that the critical terms of these practices were established in the context of a new generation of influential artists. The Freedom of Information traces a particular lineage of appropriation that accounts for the variety of its different models. Here, an intergenerational group of artists “take” materials from sources such as books, postcards, television, or art-specific contexts, manipulating them using cameras, printers, or scanners. The works in The Freedom of Information reveal that while such forms of repetition are historically rooted, appropriation remains a critically urgent means with which to address a culture saturated with images. Artists in The Freedom of Information include: Dara Birnbaum, Carol Bove, Anne Collier, Gilbert & George, Leslie Hewitt, Louise Lawler, Sherrie Levine, Cady Noland, Thomas Ruff, Sara VanDerBeek, Charline von Heyl, Kelley Walker, and Andy Warhol. The Freedom of Information is organized by Jeffrey De Blois, Curatorial Assistant.
On view October 8, 2016–January 16, 2017
One of the most influential artists of the 20th century, Louise Bourgeois worked for more than 70 years in a variety of materials—including wood, bronze, marble, steel, rubber, and fabric—to create a distinctive and expansive body of work. Blending abstraction and figuration, Bourgeois delved into the struggles of everyday life to create personally cathartic objects that reference the body, sexuality, family, trauma, and anxiety. Since the ICA’s exhibition Bourgeois in Boston (2007-08), the museum has acquired a number of her works; this selection brings together sculptures and works on paper to consider her use of framing devices. From the enclosures and doors in her large-scale cell sculptures to vitrines, borders, and platforms, the partition of space recurs in Bourgeois’ work. These “frames” serve various ends, but each articulates a kind of boundary — an inside and an outside, an object and its space, the very divisions Bourgeois so famously disrupted in her life’s work. Louise Bourgeois is organized by Ruth Erickson, Associate Curator.
First Light: A Decade of Collecting at the ICA is sponsored by
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Additional support is generously provided by Fiduciary Trust Company, Chuck and Kate Brizius, Katie and Paul Buttenwieser, Karen and Brian Conway, the Robert E. Davoli and Eileen L. McDonagh Charitable Foundation, Jean-François and Nathalie Ducrest, Cynthia and John Reed, and Charles and Fran Rodgers.
Installation view, Jennifer Bornstein: New Rubbing & Psychological Tests, Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York, 2015. Courtesy the artist and Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York/Rome. © Jennifer Bornstein
Sonia Almeida, Jennifer Bornstein, Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel, and Lucy Kim have been named the recipients of the 2017 James and Audrey Foster Prize Exhibition, the museum announced today. In media including painting, sculpture, printmaking, film, and video, and exploring a range of themes and subjects, each of the artists engage the human body with a tactile approach to its cultural, psychological, and historical resonances. Each of the artists will present a major work, or group of works, on view for the first time in Boston. The exhibition is organized by Dan Byers, Mannion Family Senior Curator, with Jeffrey De Blois, Curatorial Assistant, and will be on view at the ICA from Feb. 15 through July 9, 2017.
“This year’s James and Audrey Foster Prize Exhibition shines a light on a selection of established Boston-based artists working at a national and international level, but whose work has only received limited exposure here at home,” said Jill Medvedow, Ellen Matilda Poss Director of the ICA. “We are grateful to Jim and Audrey for this opportunity to share such exceptional work with our audiences.”
“We are very pleased to congratulate the 2017 recipients of the Foster Prize. Their work demonstrates the creativity, strength, and talent of Boston’s robust art community,” said James Foster, Chair of the ICA Board of Trustees and Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer of Charles River Laboratories.
Central to the exhibition, this iteration of the James and Audrey Foster Prize features a new program, Foster Talks, enabling audiences to engage more deeply in the work and practice of the Prize winners. Once a month over the course of the exhibition, in a space in the exhibition galleries, each artist will present their work and invite an important writer, artist, performer, researcher, or other cultural producer who has influenced their artwork, or whose own work resonates with the artist’s. The conversations will be followed by a free reception, open to the public. The Foster Talks will connect questions around contemporary art to a broad range of cultural, intellectual, and political issues, creating relationships between art and different fields. Through the Foster Talks, the ICA will welcome an expanded cultural community to form around the exhibition, animating the galleries throughout the duration of the exhibition.
Images are available upon request.
Sonia Almeida was born in Lisbon, Portugal, and lives in Arlington, MA. Almeida received a B.A. from Faculdade de Belas Artes da Universidade de Lisboa and a M.F.A. from Slade School of Fine Art, University of London. She has received numerous awards and grants, including a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant and an Artist Fellowship from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Her work has been widely exhibited at institutions nationally and internationally, including the MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge; Culturgest, Portugal; Serralves Museum, Portugal; and Witte de With, Netherlands.
Jennifer Bornstein was born in Seattle and lives in Cambridge, MA. Bornstein received a B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley, and a M.F.A. from the University of California, Los Angeles, before participating in the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Independent Study Program. She has received numerous awards and grants, including a DAAD Berliner Künstlerprogramm fellowship and a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant. Her work has been widely exhibited at institutions nationally and internationally, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.
Lucien Castaing-Taylor was born in Liverpool, UK, and Véréna Paravel was born in Neuchâtel, Switzerland; they are based in Cambridge, MA, and Paris, France. In 2006, Castaing-Taylor founded the Sensory Ethnography Lab (SEL), an experimental film center at Harvard University whose collaborative output in a variety of media—including film, video, phonography, and photography—innovatively draws from the fields of aesthetics and ethnography. Castaing-Taylor’s work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the British Museum, London, and has been exhibited at Tate, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Whitechapel Gallery, London; and Institute of Contemporary Arts, London. Paravel’s films have won Best First Feature and the Best First Feature Jury award at the Festival del Film Locarno and the Punto de Vista Award for Best Film. Foreign Parts (with J.P. Sniadecki, 2010) was a New York Times Critics’ Pick. Castiang-Taylor, Paravel, and the Sensory Ethnography Lab were included in the 2014 Whitney Biennial.
Lucy Kim was born in Seoul, South Korea, and lives in Cambridge, MA. She received a B.F.A. from the Rhode Island School of Design and a M.F.A. from the Yale School of Art. She attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and the MacDowell Colony, and is the recipient of the Carol Schlosberg Memorial Prize and the Ellen Battell Stoeckel Fellowship from Yale, as well as the Boston Artadia Award. She is a founding member of the collaborative kijidome, and is currently Lecturer in Fine Arts at Brandeis University. Her work is included in the collection of the Kadist Foundation in Paris, among others.
The James and Audrey Foster Prize is key to the ICA’s efforts to nurture and recognize exceptional Boston-area artists. First established in 1999, the James and Audrey Foster Prize (formerly the ICA Artist Prize) expanded its format when the museum opened its new facility in 2006. James and Audrey Foster, passionate collectors and supporters of contemporary art, endowed the prize, ensuring the ICA’s ability to sustain and grow the program for years to come.
The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) presents ambitious performances and dynamic artist talks as part of the 2016-2017 season. Highlights include the return of legendary choreographer Bill T. Jones to the ICA stage, a singular evening of music and poetry by Meredith Monk and Anne Waldman, and a free talk by renowned artist Kara Walker.
All events take place in the Barbara Lee Family Foundation Theater at the ICA, 25 Harbor Shore Drive, Boston. Ticketed programs go on sale to ICA members on July 27 and to the general public on July 29. Tickets can be purchased at www.icaboston.org or by calling 617-478-3103.
RY X
Oct 27 | 8 PM
$20 general admission / $17 ICA members + students
Australian singer/songwriter RY X creates songs that are intimate, intuitive, and devotional with lush melodies and raw, emotional lyrics. At the ICA, he will perform in support of his full-length debut Dawn, released earlier this year. RY X is part of the electronic/house-influenced Howling along with musician Frank Wiedemann, and is a member of the band The Acid with DJ Adam Freeland and composer Steve Nalepa.
Meredith Monk and Anne Waldman
Feb 24 + 25, 8 PM
$35 general admission / $25 ICA members + students
Two iconic women known for their mesmerizing stage presences join forces for a singular evening of music, movement and poetry. “One of contemporary music’s great innovators” (The Classical Review), Meredith Monk is renowned for her extraordinary vocal technique and her pioneering compositions, solidifying her reputation as a startling original and intrepid artist. In 1968, she founded The House, a company dedicated to an interdisciplinary approach to performance, and in 1978, she founded Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble to expand her musical forms. Anne Waldman is a prolific poet, playwright, activist, and author of more than 40 collections of poetry and poetics, including Fast Speaking Woman (1975) and Marriage: A Sentence (2000). She was a founder and director of The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church in New York and co-founded with Allen Ginsberg the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado.
Waldman begins the evening in three parts with a performative reading from her “Entanglement Variations,” with visuals of paintings by Pat Steir and sound composition by Ambrose Bye. Monk will then perform several selections of her work with members of her Vocal Ensemble. The evening culminates in an original collaborative duet between Monk and Waldman.
Big Dance Theater
Short Form
Oct 14 + 15 | 8 PM
$25 general admission / $15 ICA members + students
In celebration of Big Dance Theater’s 25th anniversary, artistic leaders Annie-B Parson—known for her work with David Bowie, David Byrne, and St. Vincent—and Paul Lazar theatrically re-imagine the conventions of a repertory program. Inspired by disciplines of the concise—novellas, folk tales, diary entries, pencil drawings, thumbnail sketches—Big Dance performs five distinct short works, each a Boston premiere, that embrace the brief, granular, close-range, anecdotal, and microscopic. Plus, discover Big Dance’s unique blend of dance theater on an intimate scale with a 15-minute onstage birthday party at the evening’s center. Hot dogs will be served.
Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company
A Letter to My Nephew — U.S. PREMIERE
Nov 11 + 12 | 8 PM
Nov. 13 | 2 PM
$40 general admission / $30 ICA members + students
A Letter to My Nephew, Bill T. Jones’s latest work, makes its U.S. premiere at the ICA. The work brings together two impulses: the social/political and the deeply personal. A Letter to My Nephew is a street scene or a still from the evening news that superimposes violent street battles in the U.S. and desperate immigrants rushing towards freedom in Europe over the image of a hospital bed untethered from reality.
Composer Nick Hallett, baritone Matthew Gamble, and DJ Tony Monkey accompany the accomplished dancers of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company with a delirious mixture of pop music, lullabies, house music, and more. Video design by Janet Wong turns the stage into a simulated battleground; through the fog, Jones’s words to his nephew come alive on stage.
Alessandro Sciarroni
FOLK-S, will you still love me tomorrow
Feb 17 + 18 | 8 PM
$25 general admission /$15 ICA members + students
Lauded Italian choreographer and theater director Alessandro Sciarroni is known for stagings that straddle dance, performance art, and ritual anthropology. In FOLK-S he refines the Schuhplatter, a Bavarian folk dance whose title translates to “shoe batter,” to its most essential form, invoking a sense of playful experimentation and ritualized trance. Starting from an unceasing repeated sequence, FOLK-S invites us to take part in an extreme, perception-based experience centering on the multiple variations that a form can take—and progressing to the point of exhaustion. Here the folk material finds its clearest revelation by being geographically and culturally decontextualized.
Alessandro Sciarroni is an Italian performing artist with an extensive background in visual art and theater. His works are featured in dance and theater festivals, museums, and unconventional spaces in more than 20 different countries.
Maria Hassabi
STAGED
Mar 17 + 18 | 8 PM
$25 general admission / $15 ICA members + students
Maria Hassabi has honed a distinct practice involving the relation of the body to the still image and the sculptural object. Her mesmerizing work takes its time and asks its viewers to do the same, as it interrogates the separation between the spectacular and the mundane, between subject and object, between performer and audience. Produced for museums, galleries, theaters, and public spaces, her work has been seen worldwide, including recent lauded presentations at Museum of Modern Art (New York), the Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam) and Hammer Museum (Los Angeles).
In Hassabi’s new theater work, STAGED, four of New York’s most captivating dancers—Simon Courchel, Hristoula Harakas, Molly Lieber, and Oisín Monaghan—perform individual solos, collectively forming an intricate live sculpture that is constantly shape-shifting, abstracting the human form and its capacities. STAGED was developed over a two-week Summer Stages Dance @ ICA residency this past summer.
Summer Stages Dance @ ICA is made possible, in part, with the support of Jane Karol and Howard Cooper, David Parker, George and Ann Colony, The Aliad Fund, and Stephanie McCormick-Goodhart.
Beth Gill
May 12 + 13 | 8 PM
$25 general admission / $15 ICA members + students
2015 Guggenheim Fellow and Doris Duke Impact Award winner Beth Gill makes her Boston debut with a new work premiering only a week earlier at the Walker Art Center in conjunction with the exhibition Merce Cunningham: Common Time. Gill, a three-time Bessie Award winner, is perhaps best known for her 2011 breakout work, Electric Midwife, about which the New York Times stated: “There aren’t many dance makers of Ms. Gill’s generation… working with the kind of clear, penetrating focus that made Midwife — a pair of perfectly symmetrical trios — such a transporting meditation on the body, its intricate physics and intrinsic poetry.”
Beth Gill’s minimalist works explore the tension between formalist structures and psychological themes, where layers of meaning unfold over a prolonged sense of time, while maintaining an extremely vivid sense of the simultaneous visual and visceral experiences of the viewer. The new work reflects on art historic values and aesthetics, and presents in its stead a dense, tangled, corporeal dance in which bodies are both disparately and desperately expressive.
This work is a National Performance Network (NPN) Creation Fund project created in partnership with the Walker Art Center, The Yard, American Dance Festival, and NPN.
The Artist’s Voice: Nicholas Nixon and Abelardo Morell
Sep 15 | 7 PM
Nationally recognized photographers Nicholas Nixon and Abelardo (Abe) Morell join Eva Respini, Barbara Lee Chief Curator at the ICA, in a conversation about art, photography, and life in New England. This special event is organized to accompany the exhibition First Light: A Decade of Collecting at the ICA, which includes photographic works by both artists. Free admission, first come, first served; tickets available two hours prior to start of program.
The Artist’s Voice: Liz Deschenes
Oct 16 | 2 PM
Artist Liz Deschenes guides visitors through her first mid-career survey, featuring 20 years of exploration of and experimentation with different photographic technologies, methods, and sculpture. Join Deschenes as she answers your questions regarding her creative process. Free with museum admission, first come, first served; tickets available two hours prior to start of program
The Artist’s Voice: Kara Walker
Nov 17 | 7 PM
Renowned contemporary artist Kara Walker has inspired a national conversation on some of the many tragedies and transgressions littering American history thanks to her unique and provocative artworks. Walker’s practice, which has included the construction of intricate cut-paper silhouettes and producing a 40-foot-high sphinx made with sugar, has influenced a new generation of artists and thinkers. Her innovative and poetic approach to making art, recognized by the MacArthur Foundation via a “Genius” grant when the artist was just 28, continue to be celebrated. In this special engagement, Walker will discuss her creative process and share the many inspirations for her cut-paper installation in the ICA’s collection galleries. Eva Respini, Barbara Lee Chief Curator, will join the artist. Free admission, first come, first served; tickets available two hours prior to start of program.
First Light: A Decade of Collecting at the ICA
Aug. 17, 2016–Jan. 16, 2017
The ICA marks 10 years of collecting with the largest and most ambitious presentation of its collection to date, First Light: A Decade of Collecting at the ICA. Occupying the entirety of the museum’s east galleries, this exhibition features more than 100 works by artists such as Louise Bourgeois, Nick Cave, Paul Chan, Marlene Dumas, Eva Hesse, Cindy Sherman, Kara Walker, and Andy Warhol. It brings together audience favorites as well as new acquisitions, many of which are on view at the ICA for the first time. A new, multimedia web platform, including texts by current and former ICA curators, accompanies the exhibition. This exhibition is organized by the ICA’s curatorial department under the leadership of Eva Respini, Barbara Lee Chief Curator.
The Artist’s Museum
Nov. 16, 2016–March 26, 2017
The desire to collect objects and images of personal significance, and to make connections between them, is a nearly universal human experience. The Artist’s Museum begins with this impulse to collect and connect, bringing together large-scale installations, photography, film, and videos that employ artworks from the past as material in the present, animating existing artworks, images, and histories to reveal art’s unexpected relationships and affinities. Each of the artists in The Artist’s Museum reimagines the lives of artworks and charts recurring forms and themes across cultures and history. They tweak the language of museum display and organization to engage a variety of disciplines and subjects, from dance, music, and design to gender, sexuality, and technology. The exhibition is accompanied by a scholarly publication. The Artist’s Museum features works by Rosa Barba, Carol Bove, Anna Craycroft, Rachel Harrison, Louise Lawler, Mark Leckey, Pierre Leguillon, Goshka Macuga, Christian Marclay, Xaviera Simmons, Rosemarie Trockel, and Sara VanDerBeek. Organized by Dan Byers, Mannion Family Senior Curator, with Jeffrey De Blois, Curatorial Assistant.
First Republic Bank is proud to sponsor the ICA’s 2016–17 Performance Season.
First Light: A Decade of Collecting at the ICA is sponsored by
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Additional support is generously provided by Fiduciary Trust Company, Chuck and Kate Brizius, Katie and Paul Buttenwieser, Karen and Brian Conway, the Robert E. Davoli and Eileen L. McDonagh Charitable Foundation, Jean-François and Nathalie Ducrest, Cynthia and John Reed, and Charles and Fran Rodgers.
Boston, Mass. (June 8, 2106) — Jill Medvedow, Ellen Matilda Poss Director of the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA), announced today the acquisition of Ashes, a momentous video installation by award-winning British artist Steve McQueen. A standout at the 2015 Venice Biennale, Ashes will make its U.S. debut at the ICA, where it will be on view from Feb. 15 through July 9, 2017.
“Ashes is a remarkable work of art; its visual and visceral power made an indelible impression on those of us fortunate enough to experience it in Venice. Now, through an extraordinary act of generosity from ICA Trustee Tristin Mannion and her husband Martin Mannion, the ICA will be able to share the experience of Ashes with our audiences for generations to come,” said Medvedow.
“Steve McQueen is one of Britain’s most influential artists, known for his film and video installations as well as feature films such as ‘Hunger’ and ‘Twelve Years a Slave.’ Ashes expands on McQueen’s subjects of the political body, and the ways in which bodies can be confined and defined by history, labor, and the legacies of colonialism and globalism,” said Dan Byers, Mannion Family Senior Curator.
McQueen met Ashes, a charismatic young fisherman in Grenada while filming another work in 2002. Shot on soft, grainy Super 8 film by renowned cinematographer Robby Müller, one screen of the installation portrays Ashes balancing on the prow of a bobbing boat, sailing through blue Caribbean water and sky. He is surrounded by the open air and sea, completely at home in his world. Ashes’ vitality and presence in this projection stand in contrast to the content of the second video projected on the screen’s other side, made eight years later, after Ashes’ death. The crisp, high definition video, shows the meticulous creation of Ashes’ gravestone and the digging of his grave. This footage provides the soundtrack to both projections, a precise, visceral soundscape of fabrication and digging overlaid by Ashes’ friend narrating his fate.
“Life and death have always lived side by side, in every aspect of life,” said McQueen. “We live with ghosts in our everyday.”
About Steve McQueen
Steve McQueen was born in London in 1969. His work has been collected by museums throughout the world, including Tate Gallery, London; MoMA, New York; The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago and the Musee National d’Art Moderne George Pompidou, Paris. His film Five Easy Pieces showed at the ICA/Boston in 1995, one of his earliest screenings in the US. McQueen represented Britain at the Venice Biennale in 2009. A recent and highly acclaimed survey of his work was co-organized by the Art Institute of Chicago and the Schaulager, Basel. McQueen won the Camera d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 2008 for his feature Hunger, the only British director to be granted the prize, and the FIPRESCI prize for Shame at the 2011 Venice Film Festival. 12 Years a Slave was awarded three Oscars at the latest Academy Awards, including Best Film. Having been appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE, 2002), McQueen was created Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2011 New Year Honors for services to the Visual Arts. He lives and works in Amsterdam and London.
About the ICA Collection
In 2006, the ICA made the pivotal decision to start a collection. Offering a diverse overview of national and international artworks in a range of media, the collection provides an important resource for contemporary culture in Boston. This summer, the ICA marks 10 years of collecting with the largest and most ambitious presentation of its collection to date, First Light: A Decade of Collecting at the ICA. Occupying the entirety of the museum’s east galleries, this exhibition features over 100 works by artists such as Louise Bourgeois, Nick Cave, Paul Chan, Marlene Dumas, Eva Hesse, Cindy Sherman, Kara Walker, and Andy Warhol. It brings together audience favorites as well as new acquisitions, many of which are on view at the ICA for the first time. This exhibition is organized by the ICA’s curatorial department under the leadership of Eva Respini, Barbara Lee Chief Curator. First Light: A Decade of Collecting at the ICA is on view at the ICA from Aug. 17, 2016, through Jan. 16, 2017.
About the ICA
An influential forum for multi-disciplinary arts, the Institute of Contemporary Art has been at the leading edge of art in Boston for over 75 years. Like its iconic building on Boston’s waterfront, the ICA offers new ways of engaging with the world around us. Its exhibitions and programs provide access to contemporary art, artists, and the creative process, inviting audiences of all ages and backgrounds to participate in the excitement of new art and ideas. The ICA, located at 25 Harbor Shore Drive, is open Tuesday and Wednesday, 10 am — 5 pm; Thursday and Friday, 10 am — 9 pm; and Saturday and Sunday, 10 am — 5 pm. Admission is $15 adults, $13 seniors and $10 students, and free for members and children 17 and under. Free admission for families at ICA Play Dates (2 adults + children 12 and under) on last Saturday of the month. For more information, call 617-478-3100 or visit our Web site at www.icaboston.org.
Image Credit
Steve McQueen Ashes, 2002-2015; Two channel synchronized HD video transferred from 8mm and 16mm film, with audio, projected onto a two-sided screen, posters; 20 min. 31 sec. Installation at Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris, 2016. Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, New York, Paris. Photo credit: Rebecca Fanuele.
(BOSTON, MA — May 24, 2016) – The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) marks 10 years of collecting with the largest and most ambitious presentation of its collection to date, First Light: A Decade of Collecting at the ICA. Occupying the entirety of the museum’s east galleries, this exhibition features more than 100 works by artists such as Louise Bourgeois, Nick Cave, Paul Chan, Marlene Dumas, Eva Hesse, Cindy Sherman, Kara Walker, and Andy Warhol. It brings together audience favorites as well as new acquisitions, many of which are on view at the ICA for the first time. A new, multimedia web platform, including texts by current and former ICA curators, accompanies the exhibition. This exhibition is organized by the ICA’s curatorial department under the leadership of Eva Respini, Barbara Lee Chief Curator. First Light: A Decade of Collecting at the ICA is on view at the ICA from Aug. 17, 2016, through Jan. 16, 2017.
“First Light: A Decade of Collecting at the ICA marks and celebrates a monumental 10 years at the ICA. This series of simultaneous exhibitions reveals the driving visions of curators and collectors, the social, political, material and aesthetic concerns of contemporary artists, and the history of ICA exhibitions over the past many years,” said Jill Medvedow, Ellen Matilda Poss Director of the ICA.
Conceived as a series of interrelated and stand-alone exhibitions, First Light is organized into thematic, artist-specific, and historical chapters that each tell a different story. Highlights include major singular works from the collection, such as a newly acquired monumental cut-paper silhouette tableau by Kara Walker; groupings of work by artists held in-depth in the collection such as Louise Bourgeois, Rineke Dijkstra, and Nan Goldin; and a gallery dedicated to objects from The Barbara Lee Collection of Art by Women. In order to accommodate the breadth of stories within the collection, several chapters will switch out halfway through the exhibition’s run. The Barbara Lee Collection of Art by Women and Soft Power galleries (described below) will be on view for the show’s entirety, serving as anchors to the overall exhibition.
“In 10 years, the ICA has built a great variety within the collection, ranging from historically significant work of figures such as Eva Hesse and Louise Bourgeois to the contemporary explorations of leading artists such as Kara Walker and Paul Chan,” said Eva Respini, Barbara Lee Chief Curator. “The work in First Light represents a broad range of art making today by artists who explore the issues of our time.”
The title of the exhibition is taken from Paul Chan’s 2005 projected digital animation 1st Light, one of the first works to enter the ICA’s collection. This significant moving-image work highlights the ICA’s aim to collect works of art in diverse media and by important contemporary artists with a critical voice.
First Light explores narratives from biography and material to feminism and appropriation in the following sections or chapters:
The Barbara Lee Collection of Art by Women
On view Aug. 17, 2016–Jan. 16, 2017
The Barbara Lee Collection of Art by Women is the cornerstone of the ICA’s growing collection. The collection includes artists working in diverse media who have made significant contributions to art over the past 40 years. This exhibition is arranged by various media and subject matters, highlighting the collection’s strength in works of sculpture and assemblage, as well as drawing and painting. Included are signature works by Marlene Dumas, Ellen Gallagher, Ana Mendieta, Cornelia Parker, Doris Salcedo, Kara Walker, among others, in addition to salient historical precedents set by figures such as Eva Hesse and Louise Bourgeois. Together, these works examine issues of the political, personal, and social body, and larger concepts of identity, all in distinct and thought-provoking ways. This presentation of The Barbara Lee Collection of Art by Women demonstrates the strength of the ICA’s expanding collection and how the collection engages in critical discourses in the arts as well as broader social and cultural contexts. The Barbara Lee Collection of Art by Women is organized by Eva Respini, Barbara Lee Chief Curator.
Soft Power
On view Aug. 17, 2016–Jan. 16, 2017
Formed by pliable materials including rope, thread, string, and fabric, the works in Soft Power derive their presence and power from, on the one hand, the seductive textures, structures, and surfaces of textiles, and on the other, the evocative social and cultural connotations these materials provoke. The smears and patterns of Kai Althoff’s gloss paint on fabric conflate painting and body in a surreal clothing-like fragment, while Alexandre Da Cunha’s BUST XXXV lurks like a floating figure, shrouded in its uncanny cover of mop and string. Sculptures by Josh Faught, Françoise Grossen, Charles LeDray, and Robert Rohm—crocheted, knotted, and sewn—variously lean against the wall, sprawl, pile on the floor, and hang on the wall to evoke the body by its covering, adornment, and poses only possible through their shared soft construction. Soft Power is organized by Dan Byers, Mannion Family Senior Curator.
Question Your Teaspoons
On view Aug. 17–Oct. 2, 2016
This exhibition explores the sphere of the domestic in the making and meaning of art. A counterpoint to such celebrated contexts as the artist’s studio and the public sphere, the home has often served artists, especially female artists, as a crucial site for the creation of their work. Artists in this exhibition derive inspiration from the objects, relationships, and aesthetics that surround them. Sherrie Levine, Doris Salcedo, and Diane Simpson reimagine mundane objects in their sculptural works; Latoya Ruby Frazier, Cindy Sherman, and Andy Warhol probe familial relations through their photographs; and Chantal Joffe and Mickalene Thomas offer striking paintings of intimate interior scenes. The title of this exhibition is a quote from Georges Perec, the great cataloguer of everyday life who challenged readers to scrutinize the ordinary. To “question your teaspoons” is to pay attention to—and bring new attention to—a quotidian thing, to study life in order to live it differently. Question Your Teaspoons is organized by Ruth Erickson, Associate Curator.
Rineke Dijkstra and Nan Goldin
On view Aug.17–Oct. 2, 2016
The ICA has rich holdings of works by Rineke Dijkstra and Nan Goldin, two leading figures in contemporary photography with a keen interest in portraiture. Both artists have a history with the ICA: the museum hosted Goldin’s first solo museum exhibition in 1985 and one of Dijkstra’s first surveys in the United States in 2001. Referencing both the historical genre of portraiture and documentary-style photography, these artists expound upon these traditions in divergent and unique ways. Goldin’s bold images depict her loved ones and closest acquaintances caught in intimate moments. From the artist’s mother laughing to a drag queen lounging at home, her compositions are vibrant and rich, powerfully emotive, and full of psychological intent. Dijkstra’s stark portraits, on the other hand, present the subjects in heightened focus and repose, stripped bare of context. Both artists subtly and overtly examine the shifting nature of identity and self. Goldin’s subjects are in action, capturing an instant within a broader narrative, exploring various gender identities, while Dijkstra’s subjects, including new mothers and children growing into adolescence or adulthood, are at the cusp of unpredictable chapters in their lives. These works, ultimately capturing everyday moments, encourage the viewers to intimately engage with the pictured subjects, and to seek out clues of their personal lives and character, reflecting our own searches for the extra in the ordinary and the thrill in the mundane. Rineke Dijkstra and Nan Goldin is organized by Jessica Hong, Curatorial Assistant.
The Freedom of Information
On view Oct. 8, 2016–Jan. 16, 2017
The Freedom of Information is a concise survey of artworks that employ strategies of appropriation, from repurposing and rephotographing mass-media images to referencing and copying objects from art history or American consumer culture. While key moments in the history of artistic appropriation (such as the readymade, collage, and montage) date back to the early 20th century, it was in the 1970s and 80s that the critical terms of these practices were established in the context of a new generation of influential artists. The Freedom of Information traces a particular lineage of appropriation that accounts for the variety of its different models. Here, an intergenerational group of artists “take” materials from sources such as books, postcards, television, or art-specific contexts, manipulating them using cameras, printers, or scanners. The works in The Freedom of Information reveal that while such forms of repetition are historically rooted, appropriation remains a critically urgent means with which to address a culture saturated with images. Artists in The Freedom of Information include: Dara Birnbaum, Carol Bove, Anne Collier, Shepard Fairey, Gilbert & George, Leslie Hewitt, Louise Lawler, Sherrie Levine, Klara Liden, Cady Noland, Thomas Ruff, Sara VanDerBeek, Charline von Heyl, Kelley Walker, Andy Warhol, and Vija Celmins. The Freedom of Information is organized by Jeffrey De Blois, Curatorial Assistant.
Louise Bourgeois
On view Oct. 8, 2016–Jan.16, 2017
One of the most influential artists of the twentieth century, Louise Bourgeois worked for more than 70 years in a variety of materials—including wood, bronze, marble, steel, rubber, and fabric—to create a distinctive and expansive body of work. Blending abstraction and figuration, Bourgeois delved into the struggles of everyday life to create personally cathartic objects that reference the body, sexuality, family, trauma, and anxiety. Since the ICA’s exhibition Bourgeois in Boston (2007), the museum has acquired a number of her works; this selection brings together sculptures and works on paper to consider her use of framing devices. From the enclosures and doors in her large-scale cell sculptures to vitrines, borders, and platforms, the partition of space recurs in Bourgeois’s work. These “frames” serve various ends, but each articulates a kind of boundary — an inside and an outside, an object and its space, the very divisions Bourgeois so famously disrupted in her life’s work. Louise Bourgeois is organized by Ruth Erickson, Associate Curator.
Acknowledgements
First Light: A Decade of Collecting at the ICA is sponsored by Christie’s.
Additional support is generously provided by Fiduciary Trust Company, Chuck and Kate Brizius, Tristin and Martin Mannion, and Cynthia and John Reed.