Experience the art of summer at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) this season with the museum’s exciting line-up of exhibitions, performances, outdoor art and events.
NEW Outdoor Sculpture on the Waterfront
Ugo Rondinone: Moonrise Sculptures
MAY 17 – SEPT. 11, 2016
Best known for his large-scale sculptures and installations, Ugo Rondinone (born 1964, Brunnen, Switzerland) works in a diverse array of media, including photography, painting, drawing, and video. Rondinone’s Moonrise series consists of nine-foot-tall figures, first modeled in clay, then cast in aluminum, and finally painted, with the hand and finger marks of the artists remaining visible. Each is named after a month of the calendar year. Time—here represented by the relationship between moon, tide, and calendar—has been a longstanding interest of the artist’s. Derived from a series of masks, these monumental visages playfully distort faces and figures with smiles and grimaces, welcoming wonder and empathy in equal measure. In these works, his first figurative sculptures, Rondinone creates a kind of uncanny romanticism. Installed outside of the ICA, MOONRISE. east. april and MOONRISE. east. may, both from 2005, will playfully welcome visitors to the ICA all summer long.
DANCE
JUNE 11, 12, 18 + 19 | various times throughout the day TBD
ON DISPLAY: A Movement Installation
Concept and choreography by Heidi Latsky
Various locations around the ICA, FREE
Created by former Bill T. Jones dancer Heidi Latsky, ON DISPLAY addresses our propensity to judge people by their physical appearance. For four hours on each of four days, up to 30 local performers representing the dance, disability, and fashion communities will place themselves on display in this commentary on the body as spectacle and society’s obsession with body image. The performers draw attention to the complex relationship between viewer and viewed, an attention that permeates the everyday existence of people who are different in some way.
JULY 23 + 24 | Museum Hours
Maria Hassabi
Open rehearsal for STAGED
Free with museum admission
Summer Stages Dance at the ICA is proud to welcome acclaimed choreographer Maria Hassabi as artist-in-residence this summer. From July 10 to 24, Hassabi and her dancers will take over the Barbara Lee Family Foundation Theater to develop a new work called STAGED, which will premiere in New York City in October and return to the ICA in 2017.
As an artist and choreographer, Hassabi has developed a distinct practice relating the body to the still image and sculptural object; she recently presented an intensive installation at the Museum of Modern Art called Plastic, in which dancers moved throughout the museum at a barely perceptible pace during all museum hours for an entire month. For her new work, she returns to her concerns regarding the relationship between performer and audience, expectations of spectacle, and the interplay between rehearsed and unrehearsed movement.
Hassabi’s work has been presented in theaters, festivals, museums, and public spaces worldwide She is a recipient of the 2015 Herb Alpert Award, a 2011 Guggenheim Fellow, and holds a BFA from California Institute of the Arts.
The ICA and Summer Stages Dance have teamed up for the past 10 years to host some of today’s leading choreographers as they develop new work; past participants have included Faye Driscoll, Rashaun Mitchell, Trajal Harrell, Miguel Guttierez, and Alexandra Beller.
MUSIC
HARBORWALK SOUNDS
THURSDAYS | JUNE 30 – SEPTEMBER 1 | 6 PM
Now in its 10th season, this partnership between Berklee College of Music and the ICA, featuring the city’s most talented young musicians—all presented FREE—is a perennial summertime favorite. With the fresh ocean breeze, fresh food, and fresh music there is no better way to spend a summer evening in Boston. Visit icaboston.org for complete schedule.
SUMMER FRIDAYS AT THE ICA
FRIDAYS| JUNE 3 – AUGUST 31
Celebrate the season at the ICA every Friday from June through August. We’ve got a slew of summertime fun for you to bask in harborside, from DJs spinning your summer soundtrack on the harbor to perennial favorites Talking Taste and First Fridays
TALKING TASTE
FRIDAYS| JUNE 10, 17 & 24 – 6:30 PM
For the sixth year running, the ICA is bringing new and exciting tastes to the Boston waterfront this summer with its popular Talking Taste series. Held on the grandstand, weather permitting, or in the Barbara Lee Family Foundation Theater, Talking Taste events include a cooking demonstration—with samples!—and audience Q+A. Come hear expert tips and trade secrets from some of our city’s most creative, celebrated chefs. Chef details at icaboston.org.
FIRST FRIDAYS
Free for members / $15 nonmembers
Join us the first Friday of every month for an evening of art, fun activities, dancing and music.
JUNE 3 | Caribbean Dream
We kick off summer and Carribbean American Heritage month simultaneously with a preview of Boston Caribbean Fashion Week, live performances, and Carnival costuming.
JULY 1 | Summer in the City
What better way to survive those simmering days than with some backyard favorites (cornhole anyone?), a seaside breeze, BBQ, and a live band?
AUGUST 4 | White Hot [Vol. 3]
This year we’re taking our annual waterfront white party to the next level. Don your most dapper summer whites and meet us harborside.
DJ NIGHTS
FRIDAYS JUL 8–AUG 26 | 5–9 PM
Advance sales: $5 ICA Members / $15 general admission
Day of: $10 ICA Members / $20 general admission
Fridays come alive on the waterfront as DJs spin on the ICA’s Vivian and Alan Hassenfeld Harborway. This series features prominent artists such as Tune-Yards and Beirut, celebrations of hip-hop, reggae, and disco in a gorgeous harbor setting. Visit icaboston.org for complete schedule.
EXHIBITIONS
OPENING THIS SUMMER:
Nalini Malani: In Search of Vanished Blood
JUNE 29 – OCT 16, 2016
Nalini Malani (b. 1946, Karachi) is India’s foremost video and installation artist and a committed activist for women’s rights. Born in Karachi in 1946, and currently living and working in Mumbai, Malani came to India as a refugee during the 1947 partition of India and Pakistan, an experience that deeply informs her work. This exhibition centers on Malani’s signature multimedia installation, In Search of Vanished Blood (2012), the title of which comes from a poem by the revolutionary Pakistani poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz. The installation is inspired by East German writer and critic Christa Wolf’s 1984 novel Cassandra, about a struggling female artist and visionary. Combining imagery from Eastern and Western cultures, with sound, projected image, and light, In Search of Vanished Blood is an enthralling, immersive experience. The work comprises six 11-minute video projections streamed around the room through five clear Mylar cylinders, hand-painted with a variety of cultural and historical iconography, which hang in the center of the room. As the Mylar cylinders rotate, the colorful and layered imagery is projected onto the walls, creating a magical environment reminiscent of lantern slide presentations and other proto-cinema experiments in the late-18th and early-19th centuries. The presentation of Malani’s immersive video installation will be accompanied by a selection of related works on paper.
Liz Deschenes
JUNE 29 – OCT 16, 2016
Deschenes is known for her lushly beautiful and meditative work in photography and sculpture, and since the early 1990s has produced a singular and influential body of work that probes the relationship between the mechanics of seeing, image-making processes, and modes of display. The first mid-career survey dedicated to Deschenes’s work, this exhibition will feature 20 years of her art, including explorations of various photographic technologies and the symbolic power of color, rich and nuanced work with photograms (a type of photographic image made without a camera), and sculptural installations that reflect the movements and light within a given space and respond to a site’s unique features. The artist will be creating a striking site-specific work comprised of 20 silver reflected photographic panels which will hang directly on the glass in the ICA’s John Hancock Founder’s Gallery overlooking Boston Harbor.
First Light: A Decade of Collecting at the ICA
AUG 17, 2016 – JAN 16, 2017
Coinciding with the ten-year anniversary of ICA’s move to its iconic waterfront building, this exhibition will celebrate the museum’s first decade of collecting. Drawn entirely from ICA’s collection and featuring multiple thematic, artist-specific, and historical sections, the exhibition will bring together both new acquisitions and favorites from the permanent collection. Conceived as a series of interrelated and rotating stand-alone exhibitions, this presentation will highlight major singular works from the collection, such as a newly acquired monumental cut-paper silhouette tableau by Kara Walker, as well as the Barbara Lee Collection of Art by Women, groupings of work by artists held in depth such as Louise Bourgeois and Nan Goldin, and thematic and art-historical groupings. A new multimedia web platform will be created to mark the occasion.
ONGOING
Geoffrey Farmer
THROUGH JULY 17, 2016
Geoffrey Farmer (b. 1967, Vancouver) is best known for his installations and large-scale, sculptural photo collages. This immersive survey of the artist’s recent major “paper works” presents room-sized installations composed of hundreds of small sculptures made of cutout photographs, fabric, and various supports. In these recent works, processions of figures assembled from fragments of book and magazine photography and illustration manifest the artist’s interest in the cross-pollination of historical and vernacular imagery. Each spectacular composition begins to chart the historical contours of our image-saturated contemporary culture, and suggest the recurring cultural themes and formal patterns. Farmer uses movement, sound, animation, puppet characters, and a panoply of highly choreographed bodies and characters to investigate world history from the different angles of its photographic and sculptural accounts.
Acknowledgments
Summer Stages @ICA is made possible, in part, with the support of George and Ann Colony and The Aliad Fund.
ICA First Fridays are sponsored by Citizens Bank.
Additional support for ICA First Fridays is provided by Harpoon Brewery
Support for Nalini Malani: In Search of Vanished Blood is generously provided by Vivien and Alan Hassenfeld, Jodi and Hal Hess, and Barbara Lee.
Support for Liz Deschenes is generously provided by Edward Berman and Kathleen McDonough, Robert and Jane Burke, Fotene Demoulas and Tom Coté, Bridgitt and Bruce Evans, James and Audrey Foster, Ted Pappendick and Erica Gervais Pappendick, David and Leslie Puth, and Mark and Marie Schwartz.
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.
Photo by Kristyn Ulanday.
A Guggenheim curator dives in to daily life at the ICA – and is inspired by what she finds.
The Center for Curatorial Leadership program offers curators the opportunity to focus on honing their leadership skills through a combination of Columbia Business School classes, meetings with cultural leaders, a diversity mentoring initiative, and a residency with the director of another museum. I was incredibly lucky to be paired with my first choice, the ICA’s own Ellen Matilda Poss Director Jill Medvedow.
I had shared with Jill my desire to learn more about what it’s like to work inside a museum in the United States. This may sound crazy for you readers who see that I am a curator at the Guggenheim. The reality is that in the twelve years I have worked there, our offices have been in downtown Manhattan, far from the Frank Lloyd Wright museum on Fifth Avenue, and a majority of my projects have unfolded in other countries.
During my week at the ICA, I was able to leave a curatorial meeting about an upcoming collection show and go straight to the galleries to study the current collection display and reflect upon the plans for a large-scale summer collection exhibition being organized by Barbara Lee Chief Curator Eva Respini and her team. I later got to meet members of the Teen Arts Council and sit down for a chat with David Henry, Bill T. Jones Director of Performing and Media Arts, before going together to the dress rehearsal of Court/Garden, an interactive performance that involved all of us. I was so energized, by the teens especially, whose enthusiastic engagement encouraged me to forget that it was the end of a long (but exciting!) day and join in the action.
I was so energized, by the teens especially, whose enthusiastic engagement encouraged me to forget that it was the end of a long (but exciting!) day and join in the action.
Jill also arranged for me to visit other museums around the city. I went to the MIT List Visual Arts Center, the Harvard Art Museums, the Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of African & African American Art at the Hutchins Center at Harvard, and the Museum of Fine Arts. I had the chance to visit the Barbara Krakow Gallery, where Barbara and I spoke about some of the artists and exhibitions that have meant the most to us. At each stop, colleagues welcomed me and openly discussed some of the challenges and opportunities we face as arts professionals trying to deliver meaningful experiences to our audiences.
Upon returning to the ICA from my sojourn around the city, I reflected upon its unique contributions to the Boston art scene and beyond. Be it the historic survey Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College 1933–1957 or the current exhibition Walid Raad, the ICA is presenting shows that are not just about looking at objects. They take the viewer on a journey across time and space, reinforcing the central importance of history and memory and the vital role of performance in contemporary art.
I am tremendously grateful to Jill Medvedow and the ICA staff and board, as well as the many other colleagues I met, for reminding me that art can be surprising, exciting, and catalyzing.
Photo by Liza Voll
There’s something for everyone this April vacation at the ICA: a bunch of fun, creative + FREE activities, exciting exhibitions, waterfront views, and many more reasons to spend the week with us!
Play gallery games, listen to book readings especially for families, enjoy the view, and try your hand with mixed-media storytelling.
Local artist Dave Ortega has spent years interviewing his now 100-year-old abuela (grandmother) and telling her story in comics. In the Bank of America Art Lab he’ll create a giant comic book where participants can explore how stories and pictures are arranged to create narrative and experiment with telling their own stories. Meet the artist during vacation week! Dave Ortega will be in attendance at the museum Fri, Apr 22, 2–4 PM. Explore how stories and pictures are arranged to create narrative and experiment with telling stories of your own.
Have a wee one in tow? Create an engaging museum experience for even the littlest visitor with ICA Gallery Games, a free pack filled with activities and tips for looking at and talking about the art on view. Available at the Holly and David Bruce Visitor Center. Recommended for ages 3 and up.
Spend some down-time in our Family Library in the Poss Family Mediatheque. Selected to complement exhibitions, highlight the creative process, or give insight into architecture, these books are best for children ages 3–8.
Saturdays and Sundays at 11 AM and 2 PM, snuggle up on big comfy pillows for in-gallery story hours at Books and Looks, staff-led readings of picture books that relate to the art on view and are accompanied by looking activities. Ask Visitor Assistants for themes and locations. Times may vary during Play Dates or holidays.
Do your kids like to draw? Ask the front desk staff for sketching supplies to use during your museum visit. Sketch with pencil in our galleries.
What’s on View:
Hit all the galleries, then stop by the Poss Family Mediatheque to learn more about the art and artists on view at the ICA. Browse photos, videos, interviews, and much more.
What ICA staff are seeing and doing around town this spring.
From getting a new perspective on the 80s to art book browsing to bingeing on “Queer Threads,” just a few of the things we’re getting into this spring:
Maria Molteni, L’œuf et L’œil (The Egg and The Eye)
How’s Howard?
Through March 29
The quirky and smart solo exhibition L’œuf et L’œil (The Egg and The Eye) by Maria Molteni at How’s Howard? in the South End is worth a visit before the end of March. Think a perfect Easter color palette spread across tennis panties, a vinyl glove, and smartly executed abstract paintings; it’s a feast for the eyes.
I’m also looking forward to Radcliffe Bailey’s spring show at Samsøn Projects, opening in April. Bailey’s work in sculpture and painting often combines red clay from his native Georgia, African sculpture, tintypes, and diverse trinkets to convey esoteric visions that are also quotidian and familiar.
—Ruth Erickson, Associate Curator
The Norton Lectures: Toni Morrison
Sanders Theater at Harvard University
Various dates through April 12
A “professorship” in poetry endowed since 1925, the Norton Lectures series presents free lectures, open to the public, by some of the most influential thinkers and creators of our time. The term “poetry” is loosely interpreted — John Cage, William Kentridge, and Herbie Hancock have shared the honor with the likes of T.S. Eliot and e.e. Cummings. Morrison’s six-part series is titled “The Origin of Others: The Literature of Belonging,” and I can’t imagine a timelier topic or wiser teacher.
—Kris Wilton, Creative Content Manager
Consumer Research Center/bookshop in collaboration with Motto Books
Carpenter Center for Visual Art at Harvard University
Wed–Sun, 12–7 PM, through April 17
CRC/bookshop is a delicious little comment on commerce of the art space and a consideration of its implications (upside: sustainability; downside: commodification). Floor-to-ceiling windows and a spacious wood table beg you to sit and indulge in their brilliantly curated selection of art books, zines, and catalogues. A lovely and light-filled space, it’s appealing in its own right, in addition to be an art-based research piece.
—Kate McBride, Marketing Associate
MUSIC: Julianna Barwick
The Middle East Upstairs, Cambridge
April 28
Julianna Barwick creates beautiful and hypnotic layered vocal compositions built mostly on loops of her own voice (which is breathtaking to witness live). She has toured with Sigur Rós in the past and is returning to the Middle East Upstairs on April 28. There are several opportunities to see her in support of her upcoming album, Will, including a special performance at MoMA on April 14, the Space Gallery in Portland, ME, on April 29, and at my personal favorite venue, 3S Artspace, in Portsmouth, NH on April 30. I highly recommend her music for fans of Brian Eno, Björk, or Sigur Rós.
—Chris Hoodlet, Membership Manager
Queer Threads: Crafting Identity and Community
Mills Gallery at the Boston Center for the Arts
Opens April 29
If you too insatiably crave fiber art and have not been satiated since we said goodbye to Fiber: Sculpture 1960–present last January, then get ready for your next fix! Queer Threads (a traveling exhibition organized by the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art in New York) opens at the Boston Center for the Arts on April 29. While the work is all fiber-y goodness, curator John Chaich has included a range of thematic practices from the personal to the political (and often both); the exhibition is the first time these works from 24 international artists have been shown together to highlight their queerness. The works are mostly contemporary with a few dating back to the 1950s and 70s. I also expect the BCA to organize some excellent programming around this show.
—Lenny Schnier, Education Department Assistant
Flash Forward Festival
Various locations throughout Boston
May 1–8
The Flash Forward Festival is Boston’s premier photography festival, celebrating New England and international photographers. There is an array of free programing throughout, including artist talks, opening events, and special exhibitions held all over the city. Check the Flash Forward website for the full schedule of events.
—Chris Hoodlet, Membership Manager
Killer Heels: The Art of the High Heeled Shoe
Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, NH
Through May 15
300 years of fabulous footwear, from architectural marvels to fashion-forward works of art. I saw this exhibition last year at the Brooklyn Museum and am so looking forward to re-visiting my favorites, like Céline’s trompe l’oeil pumps!
—Lenny Schnier, Education Department Assistant
Tseng Kwong Chi: Performing for the Camera
Tufts University Art Gallery
Through May 22
In the past several years, we have seen a lot of interest in the 1980s—an incredibly potent era in regards to the social, cultural, and political in the United States. With illuminating shows and important scholarship on this period (including This Will Have Been), people are continuing to examine, with new perspectives, the artists and artmaking of this decade, its various contexts (New York in particular), and its effects on the arts and broader cultural realms.
Recently, the emphasis has started to shift toward diverse, lesser-known figures who indelibly impacted the arts of this era, such as Tseng Kwong Chi. This first major museum exhibition of Tseng’s work (which originated at New York University’s Grey Art Gallery last year, to great reviews) showcases not only the artist’s influence on the downtown arts scene, but also his exploration of pertinent themes such as identity, identity politics, and the tenuous, even imposed or disingenuous, relationship between east and west (as seen in both of his iconic photographic series, East Meets West and Expeditionary Series) with the sort of humor and thoughtfulness that seemed pervasive at the time. Raised in Hong Kong before moving to Canada at age 16 (and to New York in his twenties), Tseng provides nuanced as well as inclusive viewpoints — as “non-Western,” an immigrant, a gay man — that augmented the cultural purview in significant ways that seem especially pertinent today.
—Jessica Hong, Curatorial Assistant
Sharon Lockhart / Noa Eshkol
Rose Art Museum
Through June 5
The Rose Museum’s exhibition Sharon Lockhart / Noa Eshkol is billed as a two-person show: of the Los Angeles–based artist and filmmaker Lockhart and the Israeli choreographer and textile artist Eshkol (1924–2007). The two women never met, but nevertheless, the project is a collaboration spanning time and geography; Lockhart’s discovery of Eshkol’s work on a 2008 trip to Israel inspired the multi-channel video work Five Dances and Nine Wall Carpets by Noa Eshkol (2011), for which Lockhart staged and filmed Eshkol’s students performing her choreography against the backdrop of Eshkol’s wall carpets. The work is an elegant installation of dancers moving in synchronized motion on multiple screens that unfold beautifully within a single gallery.
—Eva Respini, Barbara Lee Chief Curator
#techstyle
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Through July 10
I may be predisposed to like an exhibition whose title includes both a pun and a hash tag, but #techstyle at the MFA is also just a sensorial (and sartorial!) delight. Exploring the ways technological advances are changing the way designers design, it includes garments that not only make use of 3D-printing, recycled materials, LEDs, and laser technology but also cut striking silhouettes. Sumptuous, perplexing, and beautifully installed, the exhibition celebrates innovation, ingenuity, and cross-disciplinary collaboration, some of it taking place right here in town.
—Kris Wilton, Creative Content Manager
Off the Wall: Gardner and Her Masterpieces
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
Through August 15
Isabella Gardner, who died nearly a century ago, famously insisted that her art collection always remain in place in the palazzo museum rooms that she created. Now, due to roof repairs, the museum has temporarily moved a selection of paintings, and visitors may see these artworks up close and in a new light. Around the paintings weaves the story of Gardner herself: a fascinating traveler, collector, and patron of the arts. Archival material helps tell the story of how and why she amassed her collection.
—Kathrinne Duffy, Pre-Doctoral Research Fellow
Julien Prévieux: What Shall We Do Next and Patterns of Life
RISD Museum
May 27 – Nov 13, 2016
I’m anxious to see the Parisian artist Julien Prévieux’s exhibition at the RISD Museum in Providence (not Boston, but close!); as anyone who knows me knows, I’m always excited to see dance in a museum setting. With two video installations, What Shall We Do Next and Patterns of Life, Prévieux explores the ways that technology is dictates new body movement—how we use laptops, game consoles, mobile phones etc. He engages professional dancers to recreate these movements removed from the devices themselves, creating a kind of 21st-century Judson Church dance.
—David Henry, Bill T. Jones Director of Performing and Media Arts at the ICA
Also not to be missed:
Tala Madani: First Light at MIT List Visual Art Center, May 20 – July 17, 2016
MFA Thesis Shows at MassArt, April 19 – May 7, 2016
Laurie Simmons: In and Around the House at the Addison Gallery of American Art at Phillips Academy Andover
Inspired by Play Dates and the artist Nick Cave, a talented young ICA fan finds new possibilities in creative expression.
At the ICA, we regularly hear from parents about how much they appreciate our free programs for kids, especially our monthly Play Dates, which offer chances to engage with the art on view, see kid-centric films and performances, and make creative projects together. Some families become regulars who return again and again.
The ICA received the following letter from the mother of a longtime Play Date participant (and one of the ICA’s biggest fans). Let’s just say the feeling’s mutual.
Dear ICA,
My family and I have been regulars at your monthly Play Dates and we so appreciate this amazing (and free!) public service. My son is a big-idea guy with tons of creativity. Seeing himself as an artist is a big part of his identity and has helped him construct a positive self-image even when things get challenging at school.
I wanted to share with you a poster he made about Nick Cave for a “Design Your Own Homework” project at school that allowed the children to choose their own topics. He also made his own Soundsuit. The mask he made from an old lampshade and some leftover turf from the school’s field at his school’s fall festival, where children make their own Halloween costumes. The body he made out of oilcloth and thrifted items.
Last month he had a chance to meet Nick Cave in person at a talk at Lesley University, and give him photos of his project and his Soundsuit. It was like he met a rock star. When I said to my son later what an amazing, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that was, he replied, “No, I’ll see him again.” Maybe it will be at the ICA!
Thank you to the ICA for being such an important part of our family and in particular an inspiration to my son’s creative development.
Best,
Tracey