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The ICA looks abroad with exhibitions featuring Walid Raad; Nalini Malani; and Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh, and Hesam Rahmanian

When I arrived in Boston six months ago to take the post of Barbara Lee Chief Curator at the ICA, the long, cold days of winter provided me with the time and space to think about ICA’s future program of exhibitions, performances, talks, and events. The Internet has allowed for the virtual erasure of geographic boundaries and easy exchange and access to information, products, images, communities, and visual cultures from anywhere with an Internet connection. In today’s globalized world, I believe it is imperative for American museums to examine art beyond the United States and Western Europe to make connections with the various histories, traditions, artists, and institutions outside our own country. This can be achieved by exhibiting artists from around the globe, but also by expanding our web reach, with images and dialogues that can be accessed by anybody, anywhere, anytime.

This year the ICA is launching a series of exhibitions and programs by a roster of international artists that address a variety of issues in contemporary art. In December we will host The Birthday Party, the first exhibition in an American museum of three Iranian artists based in Dubai; in February, we will open the first American mid-career survey of Lebanese artist Walid Raad; and in summer, we will present an all-encompassing installation of the Indian artist Nalini Malani. In The Birthday Party, Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh, and Hesam Rahmanian will transform the gallery space into a total installation that includes the trio’s work in sculpture, video, painting, and collage, which brings together an impressive array of references and objects—from zaar music and mermaids to the work of Louise Bourgeois, and Hassan Sharif. Raad’s work in photography, video, sculpture, and performance, which weaves together fact and fiction, examines how we write, construct, and remember history, specifically the histories of regions in conflict. Malani, India’s leading artist and a committed activist, will present her enthralling multimedia installation In Search of Vanished Blood, which tells the story of a struggling female artist and visionary. Each of the exhibitions will be accompanied by a rich array of educational offerings and programs that will allow our audiences—both local and virtual—to engage with these artists’ work and ideas.

Of course we will keep exhibiting the work of artists closer to home, including Chicago-based sculptor Diane Simpson (opening December); Canadian artist Geoffrey Farmer (opening April); and the Boston-born, New York–based photographer Liz Deschenes (opening July). Made under a diverse range of geographic, political, social, and aesthetic circumstances, these exhibitions together present a wide range of approaches to the artistic, political, social, and cultural flux that have shaped the current global landscape.

 

The legendary and eccentric collector changed art history forever. 

A patron of the arts; a confidante, friend and lover to the modern masters; and a dedicated and ambitious art collector, Peggy Guggenheim was larger than life. New documentary Peggy Guggenheim – Art Addict, by director Lisa Immordino Vreeland, details the exceptional, international life of a woman who broke the rules both publicly and privately. Centered on recently recovered tapes of Peggy Guggenheim’s last interview, this film explores the vision amid tragedy of an iconic woman who eschewed tradition in both her collection and social life.

  1. Peggy Guggenheim had no art history background.
  2. Peggy’s father, Ben Guggenheim, died tragically on the RMS Titanic. He gave his life vest away.
  3. A black sheep of her family, with a love for shock, Peggy shaved off her eyebrows in high school. This rebellious act was considered so avant-garde it became a trend.
  4. At her first gallery, Guggenheim Jeuene, the young collector gave an exhibit of children’s art inspired by her daughter’s love of painting. It was the first show Lucien Freud ever exhibited in.
  5. During World War II Guggenheim spent time in Paris collecting art for a new modern art museum she planned to open in London. She requested the Louvre’s assistance in protecting the works for the duration of the war. The Louvre declined, saying the works were not worth saving. Instead a man helped her ship the whole collection to America, listed as household objects such as sheets, blankets, and casserole dishes.
  6. Guggenheim gave Hans Hoffman, Clyfford Still, Robert Motherwell, Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, Wassily Kandinsky and many more their first shows.
  7. Peggy Guggenheim hated her nose and was one of the first people to have plastic surgery. She had the doctor stop in the middle of the procedure because it was so painful, and he apparently didn’t succeed in getting her the nose she wanted. She decided to never have this botched nose job fixed.

Learn more when Peggy Guggenheim—Art Addict screens at the ICA Sep 18 + 19.

The surprising connections between two renegade institutions—Black Mountain College and the ICA—and how they impacted the course of art history

As we near the opening of the ICA’s major exhibition Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College 1933–1957, a number of people are asking me “why?” and “how?”

“Why?” is the ICA, a museum dedicated to contemporary art and artists, organizing an exhibition on Black Mountain College (BMC)—a small experimental college that operated in the hills outside Asheville, North Carolina, from 1933 to 1957?

And “how?” is BMC relevant to today’s discussions on culture, education, citizenship, and democracy?

The answers are in the ICA’s own history. The ICA was founded in 1936, just three short years after Black Mountain College was established. From the outset, the ICA was a renegade in its total embrace of the art of its time and in its belief that a progressive and liberal plurality of the arts was essential to a thriving culture/civic life. Black Mountain College was founded with a similar philosophy, which insisted on the centrality of artistic experience to preparing students for full participation in our democratic society. Now, almost 90 years later, experimentation, interdisciplinarity, collaboration, risk and failure, and experiential learning—key tenets of both BMC and the ICA—are central to conversations in education reform, workforce development, creative economies, innovation, and placemaking.

The ICA decided to organize the exhibition Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College 1933–1957 to explore and understand the enormous and outsized influence this tiny experimental college wielded on postwar culture in the United States. Not only do the BMC years chart the move from modern to contemporary art in the 20th century, many of the ideas incubated there pervade contemporary art now. The global influences this exhibition reveals as central to Black Mountain College—from Asia, through John Cage and Ruth Asawa; from Latin America, through the travels of Josef and Anni Albers; from Europe, through the artists who fled Nazi Europe—created what exhibition curator Helen Molesworth calls a cosmopolitanism of ideas, artists, and individuals.

The title Leap Before You Look reflects the daring spirit of experimentation that defined BMC and that permeates the ICA today.”

The now-famous names that populate 20th-century artistic practice—Anni and Josef Albers, Elaine and Willem de Kooning, Ruth Asawa, Robert Motherwell, John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Buckminster Fuller, Dorothea Rockburne, Ray Johnson, Ben Shahn, Aaron Siskind, Robert Rauschenberg, Gwendolyn and Jacob Lawrence, Stan VanDerBeek, and many more—were all part of the dynamic and often volatile cultural, educational, and artistic exchanges and collaborations of Black Mountain College.

In the BMC community, experiments in mixed media, assemblage, dance, found sounds and objects, architecture, photography, and film challenged the dominant tropes of painting and sculpture. The first “happening” occurred at Black Mountain College with Theater Piece No. 1, which is being reimagined at the ICA this fall. Merce Cunningham collided with John Cage and Robert Rauschenberg, and incorporated chance procedures and visual art into his work (his 1957 piece Changeling will be performed in our galleries throughout the exhibition). The art of assemblage—Rauschenberg’s first designated Combine painting was made there—and the pioneering aesthetics of collage and found materials are evident in Stan VanDerBeek’s films, and in Cage’s use of everyday sounds.

The title of the exhibition—Leap Before You Look, taken from a poem by W.H. Auden—reflects the daring spirit of experimentation that defined BMC and that permeates the ICA today. The ICA has long embraced the porousness between architecture, visual arts, dance, media, and the presentation of pioneering and emerging artists in its exhibitions. Equally important, the ICA echoes the educational pedagogy of Black Mountain College in dedicating itself to arts education as a strategy to invest in our future artists, audiences, and electorate as well as a more equitable education for urban youth. Through immersive art-making courses, interactions with visiting artists, and a shared responsibility for peer programs, teens experience learning by doing at the ICA—a critical aspect of BMC as well.

Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College 1933–1957 is an overdue and sweeping project, including 281 objects, archival materials, in-gallery dance and music, a comprehensive catalogue, symposia, course curricula, and a digital library of timelines and readings. It presents original scholarship on a key period in 20th-century cultural history that encourages us to think deeply about learning and community, culture and collaboration, experimentation and interdependence, and the world we could create anew. With this exhibition, the ICA takes a magnificent leap, celebrating the move from modern to contemporary, connecting the past to the present and, we hope, opening a vision for the future.

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