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On Dec. 16, the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) opens the first solo museum exhibition of Chicago-based artist Diane Simpson (b. 1935, Joliet, Illinois). Organized by Dan Byers, Mannion Family Senior Curator, Diane Simpson is on view at the ICA through March 27, 2016. Over the last thirty-five years, Simpson has produced a unique group of highly stylized sculptures that draw inspiration from clothing, the body, architecture, and the domestic sphere. The ICA will present a concise survey of Simpson’s sculptures featuring 15 works made between 1980 and 2014, along with a selection of related drawings and a slideshow made in collaboration with San Francisco-based artist Vincent Fecteau. The exhibition also includes a sculptural work on view for the first time.
 
While Simpson’s sculptures appear deceptively simple, they are in fact the result of a rigorous approach to making that mixes elements of clothing with construction techniques and display details gleaned from vernacular architecture, store window display, and interior design. Simpson trained as a painter and printmaker, and all of her sculptures begin as highly-detailed drawings, often made from images she has collected. Each of Simpson’s drawings is inspired by a different element of clothing, from historical sources such as samurai armor or shaker bonnets, to accessories found closer to home, like aprons or bibs. Simpson then fashions her sculptures from a wide range of both common and specialized materials—from corrugated cardboard and medium-density fiberboard to a diverse range of woods, metals, and textiles—depending on the source, as well as the intended shape and structure of each work. Surface and support intertwine: ornamental elements are constructed to hold the object together, while joints and supports create repeating patterns and moments of embellishment.

For Simpson, the sculptural process is one of translation, whereby her construction methods and material choices derive from the desire to realize each drawing in three-dimensions. Through this process, Simpson creates sculptures that consider formally and conceptually the way bodies are covered, shaped, and defined through dress. In doing so, Simpson’s works appear both vividly corporeal, as they reveal the body through spaces left around clothing, as well as abstract, with a restrained vocabulary of simple forms used to define each covering element. The results are carefully constructed, deceptively complex sculptures that interweave structure and function, and are layered with ideas about gender and dress, domestic and urban spaces, and an ethics of labor and making.  

A publication, including an interview with the artist, will accompany the exhibition.
 
About the artist
Diane Simpson received a BFA in 1971 and a MFA in 1978 from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Since 1979 she has been an active participant of numerous solo and group exhibitions in the USA. Recent solo and two-person exhibitions include SILBERKUPPE, Berlin (2015); New York University’s Washington Square East Gallery (2014); Chicago Cultural Center (2010); and Racine Art Museum, Racine, Wisconsin (2007). Recent and forthcoming group exhibitions include The Jewish Museum (2015); Maccarone Gallery, New York (2015); Sikkema Jenkins & Co, New York (2015); and CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art, San Francisco (2015). The artist’s work is in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Illinois State Museum, Springfield, IL; Racine Art Museum, Racine WI; Rockford Art Museum, Rockford, IL; The James R. Thompson Center, Chicago; and the Samek Art Gallery, Bucknell University, Lewiston, PA.

(BOSTON – Oct. 21, 2015) The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) presents the Grammy Award-winning Parisian Ensemble intercontemporain on Sunday Nov. 15, at 3:00 p.m., in the Barbara Lee Family Foundation Theater at the ICA (100 Northern Ave., Boston). General admission tickets are $25, $15 for members and students, and can be purchased at www.icaboston.org or by calling (617) 478-3103.

Between 1949 and 1954, composers John Cage and Pierre Boulez exchanged a series of letters that are the basis for this remarkable concert featuring soloists of the renowned Paris-based Ensemble intercontemporain. The group will perform a selection of works written during the composers’ correspondence including Boulez’s “Second Piano Sonata,” “Livre pour quatuor,” and “Douze notations,”and Cage’s “String Quartet in Four Parts,” “Six melodies for violin and keyboard,”“Music of Changes,” and “Sonatas and Interludes.” While teaching at Black Mountain College in 1952, Cage introduced students to the works of the young French composer, whom he viewed as a major figure in contemporary composition and sympathetic to his own musical developments. Many of the Cage compositions to be performed by Ensemble intercontemporain premiered at the College and illustrate his emerging compositional practices, which he discussed at length with Boulez. Selections from the letters will be read during the concert, offering a unique look at the work and practice of these hugely influential masters.

Program:
Pierre BOULEZ: Second Piano Sonata (excerpts)
Pierre BOULEZ: Livre pour quatuor for string quartet (excerpts)
Pierre BOULEZ: 12 Notations for piano (excerpts)
John CAGE: Music of Changes for piano (excerpts)
John CAGE: Sonatas and Interludes for prepared piano (extracts)
John CAGE: Six Melodies for violin and piano (extracts)
John CAGE: String Quartet in Four Parts (excerpts)
(with Dimitri Vassilakis, piano, Hae-Sun Kang, Diego Tosi, violins, John Stulz, viola, Eric-Maria Couturier, cello, Damon Krukowski, reader)

Presented in conjunction with the exhibition Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College 1933–1957 

About Ensemble intercontemporain
Founded in 1976 by Pierre Boulez, Ensemble intercontemporain (EIC) is composed of 31 soloists who share a passion for 20th- and 21st-century music. Together they work in close collaboration with living composers, exploring instrumental techniques and developing new and multidisciplinary projects. With the Orchestre de Paris, EIC is one of the two ensembles in residence at the new Paris Philharmonie. Now entering his third season as Music Director of EIC, composer-conductor Matthias Pintscher also serves Principal Conductor Designate of the Lucerne Festival Academy, Artist-in-Association of the BBC Scottish Symphony, and Artist-in-Residence of the Danish National Symphony. He joined the composition faculty of New York’s Juilliard School in 2014.
 
This performance is supported, in part, by the David Henry Fund for Performance.

First Republic Bank is proud to sponsor the ICA’s 2015–16 Performance Season. 

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The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) presents award-winning choreographer Faye Driscoll in Thank You For Coming: Attendance on Thursday Oct. 8, Friday, Oct. 9, and Saturday, Oct. 10 at 8:00 p.m., in the Barbara Lee Family Foundation Theater at the ICA (100 Northern Ave., Boston). General admission tickets are $25, $15 for members and students, and can be purchased at www.icaboston.org or by calling (617) 478-3103.
 
A song whose sole lyrics are the names of each of the audience members. A stage that becomes the seating. Costumes that become cords connecting audience and dancers. These are just some of the strategies used by Driscoll in Attendance, the first work in Faye Driscoll’s Thank You For Coming trilogy. The performance continues her interest in how people perceive themselves in relationship to others—an idea also expressed in her earlier work You’re Me, performed at the ICA in 2012. Intimately staged in the round, the work creates a heightened reality of observation and interdependence as five performers (along with Driscoll and composer Michael Kiley) morph through physical entanglements and scenes of distorted familiarity with physical rigor and humor. Audience and performers become one as a beautiful shared identity emerges.
 
The second part of the trilogy: Thank You for Coming: Play (working title) was in development at the ICA this past summer as part of a Summer Stages Dance at ICA choreographic residency.  It will be presented at the museum in 2016.  

Free preshow talks with David Henry, Director of Performing and Media Arts at the ICA, 30 minutes prior to curtain.

About Faye Driscoll
Faye Driscoll is a Bessie Award-winning choreographer and director who has been hailed as a “startlingly original talent” by the New York Times. Her work is rooted in an obsession with the problem of being ‘somebody’ in a world of other ‘somebodies’ and all of the conflicts and comedy born in our interactions with others. Works include: Wow Mom, Wow a postmodern/pop musical/death metal fantasy (2007); 837 Venice Boulevard (2008; Bessie Award) an autobiographical work taking place in a theater within a home; There Is So Much Mad In Me (2010) an exploration of ecstatic states; You’re Me (2012) a duet distorted by props, paint and manic costume shifts; and she is currently at work on a series called Thank You for Coming that implicates the audience in the work and invites the sensation of co-creation.
 
This performance is supported, in part, by the David Henry Fund for Performance.

First Republic Bank is proud to sponsor the ICA’s 2015–16 Performance Season.

New site offers expanded artist and curatorial content, greater access to images and information from the ICA’s collection and exhibitions, multimedia features, and more

(Boston, Sept. 17, 2015)—The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) has relaunched its website, www.icaboston.org, today announced Jill Medvedow, the museum’s Ellen Matilda Poss Director. The first major redesign in ten years, the relaunch represents a new chapter in the ICA’s online presence. The site will feature robust, expanded content—including artist interviews, curatorial essays, behind-the-scenes museum images, and related news features from Boston and beyond—to more fully reflect the richness of the museum’s exhibitions, performance, and educational programs.

“The relaunch marks the start of an exciting new era in how the ICA creates and shares our collection, programs, and knowledge,” said Medvedow. “Our online features extend the artists’ voice and curatorial ideas—commentary, interviews, images, and publications—into the digital sphere where they are open to a global audience. We share diverse perspectives on the art at the ICA as well as timely and relevant voices from our community and around the world, all contributing to a dynamic online discourse and new ICA experience.”

New web features include:

  • Editorially driven content created by ICA staff and curators including essays, travelogues, thought pieces, artist Q&As, recommendations for exhibitions and performances outside the ICA, and behind-the-scenes images from exhibition installations and performance rehearsals.
  • “In the News” section: A regularly updated compilation of art news articles related to ICA artists, staff, and exhibitions.
  • Access to object information and images for works of art in the ICA Collection, including a special section devoted to the Barbara Lee Collection of Art by Women.
  • An extensive Education section featuring publications on the ICA’s award-winning teen arts program, teacher resource sheets, and tips for families visiting the museum
  • An expanded video and audio page, featuring exhibition previews, artist interviews, studio visits, and talks between artists and curators.
  • A historical timeline highlighting key moments and exhibitions in ICA history
  • A streamlined exhibition page layout, making it easy for visitors to view related talks, tours, and events, and store merchandise, as well as exhibition-related articles and reviews, images, and video.
  • An overhauled “Calendar” section, enabling visitors to easily filter events by genre; category type, such as “Free”; or event timeframe, such as ‘This Weekend.”
  • An elegant and user-friendly design that adapts seamlessly to mobile devices and tablets
  • Enhanced social sharing capabilities

The site launches with an essay on Black Mountain College by Medvedow, as well as an introduction to the coming year’s internationally driven exhibition schedule by recently appointed Barbara Lee Chief Curator, Eva Respini. Forthcoming content to be published on icaboston.org this fall includes:

  • An essay on the connections between sculpture and photography by Dan Byers, ICA Senior Curator, in connection with current and upcoming exhibitions on Erin Shirreff, Diane Simpson, and Geoffrey Farmer.
  • An essay on race and Black Mountain College by Bryan Barcena, ICA curatorial assistant.
  • Behind-the-scenes images from the exhibition Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College 1933-1957 and its preparation.
  • An interview with Silas Riener, former member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, on reprising Cunningham works as part of Leap Before You Look.
  • A travelogue through Italy and Switzerland by Barcena.

The new site is overseen by Kris Wilton, the ICA’s Creative Content Manager, an art writer and former editor at ARTnews and Artinfo.com. “It’s been extremely gratifying to delve deep into the ICA’s programming, mission, and goals and reconsider how the institution presents itself digitally,” Wilton said. “Launching the new site is just part of a larger refresh of how we offer dynamic engagement with art of all kinds for visitors both near and far, one that will continue to be a priority in years to come.”

The website was created in partnership with Digital Loom, a web design and development company based in Cambridge, Mass.

GRAPHICS_ICA After 5

Kick off your weekend at ICA After 5!  

WHAT: 
The ICA launches ICA After 5, a new Friday evening program that is both fun and engaging.  Gather with friends and kick off your weekend with creative activities that will change every week. Activities range from champagne and beer tastings to waterfront yoga and Instagram tips. ICA After 5 is included with general admission (FREE for ICA Members/$15 for general public/$10 students).

ICA After 5 takes place Fridays* from 5:00-8:00 pm (September — April). See a calendar of upcoming events below.
*except the first Friday of each month, which is devoted to the ICA’s popular First Fridays event.

WHEN:
The preview night, Bubbles + Bedazzling, will feature a sampling of sparkling wines harborside, with a wine expert on hand to explain just what makes Prosecco so satisfying. Guests should bring something in need of sparkles; local artist, designer, and stylist Melissa Thyden of Cosmic Unicornz  will show us how to adorn the perfect jewel-encrusted denim.

Upcoming Events:

Friday, September 18 — Ocean Flow Yoga: Find your Zen with henna art and a downward dog.
 
Friday, September 25 — Instagram Latte Art: Craft a latte masterpiece and learn how to get your Instagram shots noticed.
 
Friday, October 9 — Pumpkin Spice and Everything Nice: Forget the haters and embrace our favorite fall beers and bites.

WHERE:

The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston
100 Northern Avenue, Boston, MA
 

BMC_Albers_Knot 2

This October, the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) opens the first comprehensive U.S. museum exhibition on Black Mountain College (BMC), a small, experimental school in North Carolina whose influence on art practice and pedagogy still has profound impact today. Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College 1933–1957 focuses on how, despite its brief existence, Black Mountain College became a seminal meeting place for many of the artists, musicians, poets, and thinkers who would become leading practitioners of the postwar period. Figures such as Anni and Josef Albers, John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Robert Rauschenberg, Elaine and Willem de Kooning, Buckminster Fuller, Ruth Asawa, Robert Motherwell, Gwendolyn and Jacob Lawrence, Cy Twombly, Franz Kline, Charles Olson, and Robert Creeley taught and studied at the college, among many others.

The exhibition features 261 objects by nearly 100 artists, archival materials, and, true to the interdisciplinary nature of the school, a grand piano and dance floor for live, in-gallery performances. Organized by Helen Molesworth, the ICA’s former Barbara Lee Chief Curator, with Assistant Curator Ruth Erickson, Leap Before You Look will be on view from Oct. 10, 2015 to Jan. 24, 2016. Following its ICA debut, the exhibition will travel to the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, California (Feb. 21–May 14, 2016) and the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio (Sept. 17, 2016–Jan. 1, 2017.)

“We are extremely proud to present Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College 1933-1957, a comprehensive examination of Black Mountain College, whose radical art, artists, and ideas have had a lasting impact on the art of our time,” said Jill Medvedow, Ellen Matilda Poss Director. “The most ambitious curatorial project ever undertaken by the ICA, the exhibition and performances pose an expansive vision of the arts and creativity—one that matches the ICA’s interdisciplinary artistic program and our view of the centrality of the arts in education.”

“Black Mountain College is an important historical precedent for thinking about relationships between art, pedagogy, democracy, and globalism,” said Molesworth. “Leap Before You Look examines the college’s critical role in shaping many major movements, and ideas in postwar art and education, including assemblage, contemporary dance and music, the New American Poetry, and the American studio craft movement—influences that can still be seen and felt today.”
The exhibition follows a gentle chronology, organizing the material in thematic sections, allowing each gallery to elucidate various aspects of BMC’s practice, pedagogy, and philosophy.

An introductory gallery offers background into the origins of Black Mountain College, founded in 1933 by John Rice. Influenced by the utopian ideals of the progressive education movement, BMC placed the arts at the center of a liberal arts education and believed that in doing so it could better educate citizens for participation in a democratic society. A 1952 college bulletin stated: “Our central and consistent effort is to teach method, not content; to emphasize process, to invite the student to the realization that the way of handling facts and himself amid the facts is more important than the facts themselves.”

The exhibition subsequently focuses on Anni and Josef Albers. Josef Albers was hired from the Bauhaus in Nazi-era Germany to become BMC’s first art faculty. Given the centrality of his pedagogy, and Anni’s writing and weaving, to the BMC experience , this room is dedicated to their work, including prints, paintings, photographs, and weavings made by the Alberses during their tenure at the college from 1933 to 1949. One highlight is the many trips the Alberses took to Mexico while they were at BMC and the impact these visits had on their work and teaching. Included are Anni Albers’s Monte Alban (1936), a large-scale weaving in which the strict geometry of the grid is combined with the wandering outline of Zapotec architecture, and Josef Albers’s Tenayuca (1943), an abstract painting inspired by the stairways and platforms of the eponymous Aztec pyramid.

Viewers are introduced to BMC pedagogies, which all shared the ideal of “learning through doing.” The exhibition contains work and photographs from Josef Albers’s courses in design, drawing, color, and material studies. Also exhibited are the collaborative work of students and teachers, such as jewelry made by student Alexander Reed with Anni Albers using every day materials such as corks, paper clips, and bobby pins. Models and studies for Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic sphere, first erected at BMC, are included alongside an examination of the role architectural building played at the college. These didactic tools exemplified the college’s mission to teach through hands-on experimentation.

Black Mountain College was a cosmopolitan gathering place for artists from Europe, Asia, and the United States, making it a place where a wide variety of ideas and artistic practices converged. The exhibition explores the concept of cosmopolitanism as a framework for understanding the unique position of BMC as a conduit between European and American avant-gardes which profoundly shaped the development of postwar artistic practice, teaching, and identity. Works by European artists such as Xanti Schawinsky, Lyonel Feininger, Ilya Bolotowsky, and Josef Breitenbach are presented alongside paintings by a younger generation of American artists including Elaine and Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell, Gwendolyn and Jacob Lawrence, and Franz Kline.

While there is no such thing as a Black Mountain aesthetic, the exhibition puts forward the idea that BMC generated a rich field of art, craft, and performance with a shared interest in the tactility of materials, the process of making, and the bodily engagement of the maker. Profoundly interdisciplinary, BMC gave rise to one of the 20th-century’s most legendary artistic collaborations: that of Merce Cunningham, John Cage, and Robert Rauschenberg. The exhibition features a sprung dance floor for live dance performances (see performance section below); a grand piano that will be “prepared” according Cage’s specifications; and a freestanding set decoration by Rauschenberg titled Minutiae (originally 1957).

The final gallery focuses on the college in the 1950s, a period when poetry and pottery took on especially significant roles at BMC. In his influential essay “Projective Verse,” the poet Charles Olson (the final BMC rector from 1951 to 1957) reimagines poetry as a field of action, emphasizing the use of the entire page and the importance of breath. These ideas became a catalyst for a generation of young American poets, many of whom Olson invited to teach at BMC, including Robert Creeley and Robert Duncan. This gallery examines the college’s critical role in the development of experimental literature in the United States. At the same time, the BMC pottery shop was formed and a series of influential ceramic artists taught at BMC, including Robert Turner, Karen Karnes, and Peter Voulkos. Many of those involved with pottery at BMC would lead the modern studio pottery movement in the United States.

Leap Before You Look Performance Program

Merce Cunningham and Katherine Litz dance performances
Leap Before You Look includes a 20 x 20 foot sprung dance floor to accommodate weekly, in-gallery performances. The ICA is working with the Merce Cunningham Trust and Silas Reiner, a former Cunningham dancer, to restage selected early Cunningham dances accompanied by live music. Students from the Boston Conservatory and Harvard University will work with Reiner to prepare performances and demonstrations to take place in the gallery. The ICA is also working with choreographer and performer Pauline Motley to perform BMC dance teacher Katherine Litz’s Glyph dance.

John Cage performances
Leap Before You Look also includes a grand piano. For a limited period of time during the exhibition, the piano will be “prepared,” using a method developed by Cage through which the piano (and its sound) is altered by the addition of screws, erasers, and other pieces of hardware to the strings, dampers, and/or hammers. The process of preparing the piano will be open to the public, so that visitors can see how it is done and engage in conversation with the preparator.

Concert by intercontemporain
November 15, 2015
Between 1949 and 1954, composers Pierre Boulez and John Cage exchanged a series of letters in which they discussed compositional practices and the current culture. Members of the French ensemble intercontemporain, founded by Boulez, will perform a selection of works by Cage and Boulez composed during this epistolary period and also read excerpts from the letters themselves.

Re-staging of John Cage’s Theater Piece No. 1
The ICA has invited artist Kelly Nipper; artist Jonathan Calm; poet Damon Krukowski; musician Tim McCormack; and Boston Poet Laureate Danielle Legros Georges to reimagine John Cage’s Theater Piece No. 1, the first “happening” and one of the most oft-cited events in BMC history. Theater Piece No. 1 was arranged according to a simple “score” that allotted each performer a set duration of time in which to perform an activity. The five aforementioned practitioners will each propose a series of actions to take place over the course of the exhibition (whose dates will serve as the “score”) that together constitute a reimagining of Theater Piece No. 1. This project re-animates the first happening by inviting contemporary artists to respond to its history and to consider its legacy in dialogue with contemporary art, practice, and culture.

Soundscape
Music was a central part of the BMC curriculum and experience. The ICA has developed a soundscape, organized by John Andress, ICA Associate Director of Performing Arts, to accompany the exhibition and assure that music is part of the gallery experience. This soundscape consists of four playlists drawn from the BMC repertoire (music taught and performed at the college) that will be played through the gallery space. Among the composers included are Bach, Beethoven, Pierre Boulez, Miles Davis, and John Cage.

Catalogue
Leap Before You Look is accompanied by a fully-illustrated, 400-page catalogue published by the ICA in association with Yale University Press. The catalogue includes an essay by Molesworth focusing on the interrelated themes of art pedagogy, progressive education, democracy, and cosmopolitanism. Molesworth has invited contributions from more than 20 scholars, both senior and junior, who possess specialized knowledge of a variety of topics from the history of weaving and ceramics to modernist music and American poetry. The catalogue’s diversity of voices mirrors the mixture of objects in the exhibition and the spirit of BMC. Authors include Harry Cooper, Eva Diaz, Steve Evans, Jennifer Gross, Jonathan Hiam, Katherine Markoski, Nancy Perloff, Jeffrey Saletnik, Alice Sebrell, Jenni Sorkin, Gloria Sutton, and many others.

Image: Anni Albers, Knot 2, 1947, gouache on paper, 17 x 21 ⅛ inches. © The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation/ Artists Rights Society New York. Photo: Tim Nighswander/ Imaging 4 Art

Media Preview
Press are invited to view the exhibition on Tuesday, Oct. 13 at 9:30 a.m. RSVP to Kate Shamon at kshamon@icaboston.org.

Erin Shirreff explores relationship between photography and sculptural forms  

Leading artist Mona Hatoum featured in new exhibition drawn from the ICA’s Barbara Lee Collection of Art by Women

(BOSTON—July 31, 2015) – On Aug. 26, the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) opens two new exhibitions: Erin Shirreff in the Fotene Demoulas Gallery and Mona Hatoum in the Paul and Catherine Buttenwieser Gallery.
 
Erin Shirreff
Aug. 26 – Nov. 29
Working across media with a focus on material and the analogue, Brooklyn-based artist Erin Shirreff (b. 1975, Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada) explores the intertwined relationship between sculpture and photography. Covering several years of the emerging artist’s work, Erin Shirreff includes both sculptures and photographs that investigate the complexities of representing sculptural objects in two dimensions. In series such as “Monograph” Shirreff photographs sculptures she creates by hand expressly for that purpose. Alongside these photographs will be several large sculptures, among them a series called “Drops.” For these, Shirreff creates shapes by hand-cutting scraps of paper, enlarging them, and cutting them into sheets of steel. The exhibition also presents the video Medardo Rosso Madame X, 1896 (2013), a 24-minute silent work Shirreff created by manipulating copies of an image of a sculpture by proto-modernist Medardo Rosso, then assembling them digitally.  The exhibition brings together fourteen works of sculpture, photography and video including two new large-scale cyanotype photograms.
 
Shirreff studied at the University of Victoria, in B.C., and received her MFA from Yale University School of Art in 2005. She has been shown in several solo and group exhibitions, and has received a number of awards, including the Aimia/AGO Photography Prize, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto (2013), The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant (2011), and the Canada Council for the Arts Project Grant (2011).
 
Erin Shirreff is organized by Jenelle Porter, Mannion Family Senior Curator, Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, and Cathleen Chaffee, Senior Curator, Albright Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo.

Mona Hatoum
Aug. 26 – Nov. 29
Over the past three decades, Mona Hatoum (b. 1952, Beirut, Lebanon) has explored the fine line between the familiar and the uncanny with her visceral body of work. Through the juxtaposition of incongruous materials, changes of scale, or the introduction of contradictory elements, she infuses commonplace and even banal objects with an element of danger, references to violence, or the capacity to inflict bodily harm. In doing so, Hatoum engages the tactile imagination; her sculptures, photographs, and videos incite viewers to imagine their own bodies in relation to these unruly objects. The myriad and often conflicting allusions speak both to the history of conflict in the artist’s homeland and to the comfort and safety provided by the domestic realm. The eight works of sculpture and photography that comprise Mona Hatoum are drawn entirely fromgifts to the ICA/Boston by the Barbara Lee Collection of Art by Women.
 
Hatoum’s work has been presented in solo and group shows around the world, and is currently the subject of a major exhibition at the Centre Pompidou, Paris.

 

(BOSTON, July 21, 2015) The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) presents ambitious performing arts programming for the 2015-2016 season including groundbreaking dance, theater, music and multimedia performances, as well as a provocative film and video schedule.

Highlights include performances and artist talks as part of the fall exhibition Leap Before You Leap: Black Mountain College 1933–1957 (Oct. 10, 2015 – Jan. 24, 2016), including a newly rediscovered work by Merce Cunningham and avant-garde compositions by John Cage, performed on a piano “prepared” to his specifications.

All events take place in the Barbara Lee Family Foundation Theater at the ICA, 100 Northern Avenue, Boston. Ticketed programs go on sale to ICA members on July 21 and to the general public on July 22. Tickets can be purchased at www.icaboston.org or by calling 617-478-3103.

DANCE
________________________________________________________________________________
OCT 8, 9 + 10 | 8 PM
Faye Driscoll
Thank You For Coming: Attendance
$15 ICA members + students / $25 nonmembers
Faye Driscoll’s Attendance continues the choreographer’s interest in how people perceive themselves in relationship to others – an idea expressed in her earlier work You’re Me, performed at the ICA in 2012. In this first installment of her Thank You for Coming trilogy, five performers (along with Driscoll and composer Michael Kiley) pass through ever-morphing states of physical entanglements and scenes of distorted familiarity with physical rigor and humor, creating a constantly reimagined group experience. Intimately staged in the round, Driscoll creates a heightened reality of observation, invitation, and interdependence. Audience and performers increasingly find themselves becoming one as a beautiful and shared identity emerges. The second part of the trilogy was in development at the ICA this past summer and will be presented in 2016. 
 
DEC 18 + 19 | 8 PM
DEC 20 | 2 PM
The Bang Group
Nut/Cracked
$15 ICA members + students / $25 nonmembers
Nut/Cracked—The Bang Group’s beloved, witty response to The Nutcracker—has delighted audiences for more than a decade. Nut/Cracked takes its inspiration from all corners of the dance canon, from tap riffs to en pointe ballet, by way of bubble wrap, disco, and Chinese take-out noodles (consumed en pointe!). Choreographer David Parker finds beauty in the ridiculous, waltzing us through many incarnations of Tchaikovsky’s score, including versions by Duke Ellington and Glenn Miller, as well as the traditional orchestral suite. You’ll never watch The Nutcracker in quite the same way again!

MAR 25 + 26 | 8 pm
Trajal Harrell
Antigone Sr./Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at The Judson Church (L)
$15 members + students/$30 nonmembers
“But this, finally, is the House of Harrell.” — Claudia La Rocco, the New York Times
“For a “serious” artist, Harrell doesn’t seem to take himself too seriously.” Andrew Boynton, the New Yorker
 
When Trajal Harrell first posed his provocative question of what would happen if vogue dancers from Harlem had come downtown to mash up with the post-moderns at Judson Church in the 1960s, who knew the answer would lead to Greek tragedy. In Antigone Sr. (L), the fifth installment of Harrell’s ongoing series Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at The Judson Church (ICA audiences may remember the previous installment (M)imosa), the pioneering choreographer questions how different vogueing and the theater of antiquity might be, reimagining notions of gender, class, sexuality, and citizenship.
 
APR 8 + 9 | 8 PM
a canary torsi
Court/Garden
$15 members + students/$30 nonmembers
 
“Castro and her teeming band of collaborators…have gone all out here in an elaborate mash-up of Sun King spectacle with modern technology in which audience members are not only part of the mix but the whole point of it.”  —dance critic Eva Yaa Asantewaa
 
A spectacle in three acts, choreographer Yanira Castro’s Court/Garden takes as its inspiration the imperial ballets of Louis XIV’s court, the spectatorship of the proscenium stage, and the presentation of video feeds. Each act is staged within a specific audience/performer relationship, shifting the experience to ask, Who is the court? Who will be king for a day? Performed by Castro’s group a canary torsi, Court/Garden evokes cultural, social, and political frames of experience with an operatic, spectacle-driven vocabulary reflecting how power functions in contemporary theatrical images from the fashion runway to the creation of cultural icons.
 
LEAP BEFORE YOU LOOK: BLACK MOUNTAIN COLLEGE 1933-1957
PERFORMANCE PROGRAM

Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College 1933–1957 (Oct. 10, 2015 – Jan. 24, 2016) is the first comprehensive U.S. museum exhibition on Black Mountain College, a small, experimental school in North Carolina whose influence on art still has profound impact today. Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College 1933–1957 focuses on how, despite its brief existence, Black Mountain College became a seminal meeting place for many of the artists, musicians, poets, and thinkers who would become leading practitioners of the postwar period.  A defining feature of the education and experience at Black Mountain College was the integration of all art forms—music, dance, film, theater, and visual arts—with the liberal arts. Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College 1933–1957 includes a grand piano and a sprung dance floor within the galleries so that dance and music performances may take place alongside paintings and sculptures in a nod to the college’s radical interdisciplinarity. 

Selected Highlights:
 
OCT 10 + 11 | 2 PM + 4 PM
Excerpts of work by Merce Cunningham
Performed by students from Boston Conservatory.
 
OCT 13 + 15 | TIME TBD
Performance by Harvard students based on Cunningham techniques

OCT 17 + 18 | 2 PM + 4 PM
NOV 21 + 22 | 2 PM + 4 PM
JAN 16 + 17 | 2 PM + 4 PM
Polly Motley performs Katherine Litz’s Glyph 
Commissioned by the ICA, dancer and choreographer Polly Motley performs Glyph, a whimsical work choreographed by dancer and teacher Katherine Litz at Black Mountain College in 1951. Like Cunningham, Litz pursued movement based on the logic of the body in space rather than an allegory of inner emotions.
 
NOV 12, DEC 10 + 12, JAN 21 + 23 | 6:30 PM + 7:30 PM
NOV 14 +15, DEC 13, JAN 24 | 2 PM + 4 PM
Silas Riener performs Merce Cunningham’s Changeling
Boston Conservatory students perform Cunningham
Former Cunningham dancer Silas Riener performs Changeling a newly rediscovered work in this Boston debut; under his direction, Boston Conservatory students perform samples of other Cunningham repertoire.  Changeling was one of Merce Cunningham’s solos involving chance; it had its premiere in 1957 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and was last performed in Tokyo in 1964.

NOV 7 + 8, JAN 9 + 10 | 2 PM + 3:30 PM
The Prepared Piano
Visitors will watch as Elaine Rombola prepares the in-gallery piano to Cage’s specifications—by inserting screws, erasers, paperclips and other objects into the strings—and performs selections from Cage’s famous “Sonatas and Interludes.”

NOV 15 | 3 PM
Ensemble Intercontemporain
John Cage and Pierre Boulez: Correspondence
$15 ICA members + students / $25 nonmembers
Presented in conjunction with Look Before You Leap: Black Mountain College 1933–1957.
Between 1949 and 1954, composers John Cage and Pierre Boulez exchanged a series of remarkable letters that are the basis for this remarkable concert featuring soloists of the renowned Paris-based Ensemble Intercontemporain. The group will perform a selection of works written during the composers’ correspondence including Boulez’s “Second Piano Sonata,” “Livre pour quatuor,” and “Douze notations” and Cage’s “String Quartet in Four Parts,” “Six melodies for violin and keyboard”, “Music of Changes,” and “Sonatas and Interludes.” While teaching at Black Mountain College in 1952, Cage introduced students to the works of the young French composer, whom he viewed as a major figure in contemporary composition and sympathetic to his own musical developments. Many of the Cage compositions to be performed by Ensemble Intercontemporain premiered at the College and illustrate his emerging compositional practices, which he discussed at length with Boulez. Selections from the letters will be read during the concert, offering a unique look at the work and practice of these hugely influential masters.
 
MUSIC
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NOV 13 | 8 PM
John Zorn
Simulacrum
$15 ICA members + students / $25 nonmembers
Called the most extreme organ trio ever, Simulacrum is yet another wild new offering from composer and alchemist John Zorn, who continues to explore new worlds and new ensembles into his sixth decade. With dramatic through-composed pieces (meaning pieces in which each stanza takes on a new style) that unfold with a cinematic logic, this genre-bending music defies classification, touching upon metal, jazz, minimalism, atonality, noise, and more. Passionately performed by an unusual all-star trio of John Medeski on organ, Matt Hollenberg on guitar and Kenny Grohwoski on drums, this powerful and fascinating music highlights the MENTAL in experimental!  John Zorn will be present to introduce the work.
 
FEB 19 (with after-party) | 8 PM
FEB 20 | 8 PM
Kid Koala’s Nufonia Must Fall
Performance only: $20 members + students/$25 nonmembers
Friday performance and after party: $30 members + students/$35 nonmembers 
After party only: $15 members + students/$20 nonmembers
Scratch DJ and music producer Kid Koala present a heartwarming adaptation of his graphic novel Nufonia Must Fall, in which a lovesick robot attempts to write a love song to woo a co-worker. K.K. Barrett, Oscar-nominated for designing Spike Jonze’s Her, directs the production, which features a real-time filming of a puppet cast that interacts with more than a dozen miniature stage settings. Kid Koala and the Afiara Quartet provide musical accompaniment on strings, piano, and turntables. Stick around for a special one-night-only after party DJed by Kid Koala following Friday’s performance.
 
APR 28 | 7:30 PM
Sound Icon, conducted by Jeffrey Means, perform:
Pierre Boulez, Anthèmes 2
Beat Furrer, Gaspra et Aria
Tristan Murail,  L’esprit des dunes
 
APR 29 | 7:30 PM
The JACK Quartet perform:
Chaya Czernowin, Hidden
Jonathan Harvey, 4th Quartet
Individual concerts: $10 ICA members + students / $20 nonmembers
Special package offer: Both concerts: $15 ICA members + students / $30 nonmembers
 
IRCAM, the Institute for Research and Coordination in Acoustics/Music, is one of the world’s largest public research centers dedicated to both musical expression and scientific research. Founded in Paris by composer Pierre Boulez in 1977, IRCAM allows contemporary composers to combine their innovative artistic sensibilities with scientific and technological experimentation. Following a weeklong residency at the Boston University Center for New Music, IRCAM will present two extraordinary concerts of music presented by the Boston-based ensemble Sound Icon and the JACK Quartet.
 
The IRCAM concerts and residency are co-produced by the ICA/Boston and the Boston University Center for New Music with support from the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation, the BU Center for the Humanities, The BU College of Fine Arts and School of Music and the French American Cultural Exchange Fund.
 
FILM
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$5 members + students/$10 nonmembers

SEP 18 | 7 PM
SEP 19 + 20 | 3 PM
Peggy Guggenheim – Art Addict
A mythic character who was not only ahead of her time but helped to define it, Peggy Guggenheim was an heiress to her family fortune who became a central figure in the modern art movement. As she moved through the cultural upheaval of the 20th century, she collected not only art, but artists as well, developing personal relationships with such figures as Samuel Beckett, Max Ernst, Jackson Pollock, Alexander Calder, and Marcel Duchamp, as well as countless others. While fighting through personal tragedy, she maintained her vision to build one of the most important collections of modern art, now enshrined in her Venetian palazzo. Directed by Lisa Immordino Vreeland. USA, 2015, 97 minutes.

OCT 3 | 7 PM
OCT 4 | 3 PM
Here Comes the Videofreex!
This documentary in progress tells the story of the most radical video collective of the 1960’s and 70’s in a quirky tale of ten people’s optimism, creativity, and vision of what television could have become had the three big networks not ruled the TV airwaves. Produced and directed by Jon Nealon and Jenny Raskin, who will be in attendance along with Skip Blumberg, legendary video artist and former member of Videofreex. USA, 2015, 79 minutes.

NOV 7 | 3 PM + 7:30 PM
Monsoon, Prayers and New Routes: Urban Islam Across the Indian Ocean
Drawing upon work from native and diaspora filmmakers and artists from Egypt, India, Indonesia, Kuwait, and Turkey, Monsoon, Prayers and New Routes documents the Islamic communities dispersed around the Indian Ocean and beyond. Many of the filmmakers and artists featured in the program reside in trans-oceanic port cities, and their practice touches upon concepts that reverberate across diaspora and migration, urban culture and religious struggle, and new approaches to image and sound in the age of globalization. Organized by writer and independent curator Xin Zhou in collaboration with the Harvard University Asia Center.

NOV 8, 12 + 14 | TIME TBD
The Boston Jewish Film Festival
Ticket Price TBD
The Boston Jewish Film Festival (November 4–16) celebrates the richness of the Jewish experience and inspires the community to explore the full spectrum of Jewish life and culture through film. Through stellar features, shorts, and documentaries as well as events with visiting artists and gatherings that encourage discussion and shared experience, filmgoers have the opportunity to be transformed by what they see on the screen and by their interactions with one another. For more information, visit bjff.org and icaboston.org.

NOV 27 + 28 | 3 PM
Station to Station
A high-speed road-trip through modern creativity, artist Doug Aitken’s Station to Station is a revolutionary feature comprised of 61 one-minute films highlighting an exciting and eclectic mix of artists, musicians, writers, places, and perspectives. In the summer of 2013, a train designed as a kinetic light sculpture by the artist traveled from New York City to San Francisco over 24 days. Rolling into ten stations along the route, the train set in motion a series of happenings, each unique to its location and mix of creative participants. The film includes profiles, intimate moments on the train, conversations, and performances at the happenings: Ed Ruscha describing the discoveries to be made in the great American landscape; Beck performing with a gospel choir in the Mojave Desert; Jackson Browne reflecting on the influence of the railroad on his music, and many more. Station to Station is a kaleidoscope of experience and artistic production, as much as it is a story of our evolving creative culture. USA, 2015, 71 minutes.
 
TALKS + MORE
FREE with museum admission (unless otherwise specified)

SEP 17 | 7 PM
The Artist’s Voice: Ethan Murrow
Artist Ethan Murrow transformed the ICA’s Sandra and Gerald Fineberg Art Wall with a monumental drawing using a familiar writing tool—Sharpie. To celebrate the artist’s installation, ICA Assistant Curator Ruth Erickson joins Murrow—Professor of Painting at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts—in an engaging conversation exploring his inspirations and influences.

OCT 17 | 10 AM – 12 PM or 2 PM—4 PM
Artist Response: ARE on ICA Exhibitions
$10 materials fee
Discover new ways of engaging with contemporary art with Boston-area art collaborative ARE (Aesthetic Relational Exercises). Artists Helen Miller and Joshua Hart of ARE lead visitors through simple artistic exercises and gestures in response to artworks found in the ICA’s galleries. Previously featured at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Noguchi Museum, and Dia Art Foundation, among other well-known sites, ARE’s workshops encourage visitors to experience works of art through artmaking that is fresh and new. No previous artmaking experience required. Capacity is limited; pre-registration strongly recommended.

OCT 29 | 7 PM
The Artist’s Voice:  Sara VanDerBeek on Stan VanDerBeek
Celebrated American photographer Sara VanDerBeek joins Eva Respini, the ICA’s Barbara Lee Chief Curator, in this evening dialogue that explores the many artistic contributions of Stan VanDerBeek, Sara’s father and a Black Mountain College alum. Learn more about Stan’s work during and after his tenure at Black Mountain College in this unique introduction that will also reflect his influential role on his daughter’s practice.

NOV 5 | 7 PM
The Artist’s Voice: Jonathan Calm, Danielle Legros Georges, Damon Krukowski, Timothy McCormack and Kelly Nipper
In association with the exhibition Leap Before You Leap: Black Mountain College 1933–1957, the ICA has collaborated with five artists of various disciplines to properly celebrate the first Happening—an important and influential event in the history of art. These area artists were asked to respond to college’s history and connect it with contemporary practice; their actions are presented in the galleries while the exhibition is on view. Hear directly from Calm, Legros Georges, Krukowski, and McCormack on their intensive participation in this distinct project honoring the legacy of Black Mountain College.

NOV 22 | 2 PM
Gallery Talk: Bryan Barcena on Mona Hatoum
In this conversation on Lebanese-born Palestinian artist Mona Hatoum, Curatorial Assistant Bryan Barcena introduces the artist’s diverse approaches to material and the many entry points of interpretation the work invites.

Image: Merce Cunningham in Changeling, Photo: Matthew Wysocki

(Boston, MA )— The first museum survey of sculptor Arlene Shechet, this major exhibition features over 150 objects that, seen together, trace the development of Shechet’s innovative practice over the past 20 years. For her entire career, the artist has embraced an experimental approach to sculpture, finding form in the chance processes that occur as mutable materials—such as plaster, ceramic, paper pulp, and glass—become solid. Shechet has, over the last decade, generated a body of work remarkable for its use of clay. Her exhilarating, polymorphic sculptures test the limits of form, and deploy color to generate painterly effects and visceral surfaces. Fascinated by clay’s material history, she recently completed a residency at the renowned Meissen Porcelain Manufactory in Germany. The resulting body of work—including mashups of functional objects and whimsical figurines—show an artist at the top of her form: recasting centuries-old traditions into her own mold. On view from June 10 through Sept. 7, Arlene Shechet: All at Once is organized by Jenelle Porter, Mannion Family Senior Curator.
 
“Arlene Shechet’s work over the past two decades has brilliantly and beautifully challenged conventions in ceramics, drawing, painting, and sculpture,” said Jill Medvedow, Ellen Matilda Poss Director of the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston.  “Arlene Shechet: All At Once takes audiences on a journey of exploration and imagination, asking essential questions about the physical world and presenting an artistic vision that transcends it.”
 
“Shechet has made a major contribution to the contemporary conversation about process and material,” said Porter. “Now several years into a commitment to sculpture in ceramic, Shechet pushes the boundaries of her medium to reveal endless possibilities of form and surface. For her, clay is the material that allows for the most unmediated experience with art; it’s a living material, one capable of recording and externalizing the emotional and physical process of its making.” 
 
The exhibition is organized chronologically to demonstrate how the artist has moved fluidly from one material to the next. The introductory gallery contains works from the 1990s: plaster Buddhas and Buddha heads, a series of works on paper focused on stupa floorplans, and cast paper vessels. The latter, from a larger installation titled Once Removed (1998), references blue-and-white porcelain and Shechet’s ongoing consideration of the histories and traditions of West and East. Her work in paper from this decade inaugurated a continued exploration of the capabilities of material—which Shechet constantly pushes upon—as well as her own skill. The Buddhas, heads, and cast paper vessels are displayed on an artist-designed and composed multilevel plinth. The first room of the exhibition introduces viewers not only to Shechet’s art, but her particular form of installation. The artist has designed the entire exhibition, carefully composing and choreographing the viewer’s experience of her work.

The second room features two bodies of work: Building (2003) and In the Balance (2004). Building, a cityscape-like installation of cast porcelain vessels that shade from white to black, introduces viewers to casting, one of the most ancient of sculpture’s modes. Its stacked forms recall stupa architecture as does In the Balance, a series of mouthblown crystal shapes.

In the 2000s, Shechet’s work in glass led to experimentation with clay, which allowed her to work immediately and independently. For an artist long involved with drawing, she found clay to be a “three-dimensional drawing material” as well as a material with a captivating history.“ Shechet’s first body of sculpture was about breath (coming on the heels of her blown crystal), and resembles smoke puffs, clouds, lungs, oil lamps, and other air-filled forms. To counter this bulbous airiness, Shechet finished the forms with heavy monochromatic and metallic glazes. Enlivening the sculptural dialogue about object and base stimulated by the work of modernist artists such as Brancusi, Shechet made the clay sculpture to sit atop composed bases of plaster, wood, metal, and other materials.
 
The third room of the exhibition—a long gallery extending the entire length of the ICA’s West Gallery—displays 25 ceramic sculptures that highlight the ways Shechet has explored form, display, color, weight, and balance. In 2009, she returned to high-key color, treating the surfaces of the clay as supports (like a canvas) for gestural color.

Shechet’s most recent work fills two final rooms adjacent to the ceramic sculpture gallery. The first contains a series of cast paper works that show her mastery of color as applied in paper, unusually, to molds made from materials Shechet uses in her studio: kiln bricks, tabletop leftovers, chunks of clay. The second of these rooms is an elaborate, specially-designed, intimate room that features work from the artist’s 2012-2013 residency at the Meissen Porcelain Manufactory in Germany. For the ICA exhibition, Shechet is creating a mise-en-scene that will incorporate more than 55 pieces of her own work alongside historic 18th-century Meissen figurines and wares.
 
About the artist
Arlene Shechet has received broad recognition for her corporeal and suggestive ceramic work. She is the recipient of numerous awards including a 2004 John S. Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship Award, New York Foundation for the Arts awards, a 2010 Anonymous Was a Woman Artist Award, a 2010 Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant, and a 2011 American Arts and Letters Award for Art. Her work is included in both public and private collections worldwide including the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Princeton Art Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art, Walker Art Center and the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art. Shechet holds a B.A. from New York University and an M.F.A. from the Rhode Island School of Design. She lives and works in New York City and upstate New York.  

Image: Installation view, Once Removed, Shoshana Wayne Gallery, Santa Monica, California (1998) Photo by John Berens

Major support for Arlene Shechet: All at Once is provided by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

Additional support is generously provided by Steve Corkin and Dan Maddalena, Fotene Demoulas and Tom Coté, Hal and Jodi Hess, Allison and Edward Johnson, Barbara Lee, Charlotte and Herbert S. Wagner III, and Sikkema Jenkins & Co.