Works that have especially moved (or impressed or confused or startled or surprised) us

As we celebrate the ICA collection’s first 10 years in First Light: A Decade of Collecting at the ICA, staff members have been trading stories about which works have made the biggest impressions on them over the years. Here ICA staff talk about which works in the collection have moved, impressed, or stuck with them the most.

Almerisa series by Rineke Dijkstra

I’ve always been fascinated by photography’s particular relationship to time—the present in the moment of its taking and then, almost immediately, the past, history, and death. It’s like a life cycle in one image. Rineke Dijkstra’s portrait series of a Bosnian refugee named Almerisa captures a child growing up and ends with a photo of Almerisa holding her own child. When I first saw the series in Dikstra’s survey exhibition at the Guggenheim, I was struck by how each image perfectly captures a phase of adolescence through very simple means: the discomfort of being twelve, the thin confidence of being sixteen. The pose and outfit (always chosen by Almerisa) convey so much about the emotional terrain of childhood. I wish all of our school pictures could possess such truth and intimacy rather than the generic quality that comes from a request to “smile” and quickly move on. —Ruth Erickson, Associate Curator

An installation of women's shoes embedded in five narrow cavities in a white wall covered by a translucent, tinted skins.

Atrabiliarios by Doris Salcedo

I am haunted by Doris Salcedo’s Atrabiliarios. When I first saw it a few years ago, it felt like a punch in the stomach. Since then, it is like tinnitus in my ear — a constant background hum reminding me that all is not well. The work is almost invisible as it recedes into the wall, but it screams of pain and injustice. The delicacy of the stitching and the shoes of the disappeared women belie the violence that was their fate. They are quiet now, but I can’t help but hear them. —David Henry, Bill T. Jones Director of Performing Arts

DeLuxe by Ellen Gallagher

Raised in an environment where black men and women were not well represented outside of their community through verbal and visual signifiers, I find DeLuxe a representation of and a confrontation against this. I appreciate Gallagher’s ability to draw me in through clever appropriation and collaged accoutrement—glitter, crystals, foil paper, and gold leaf—in order to confront this black representation and give way to the possibility of a new representation. DeLuxe is beautiful and dark all at once. —Liana Mestas, Development Coordinator

Ennead by Eva Hesse

I have always admired the brilliance and tenacity of Eva Hesse. Ennead represents to me a radical approach to making and experiencing art. It bombards my mind and eyes with questions regarding its materials, construction, and placement. Ennead is also a personal reminder of the artist’s strength. The work was created at a pivotal time in her life, between an extended trip to Germany — a place she had been forced to escape — in 1964 and her untimely death in 1970. Through works like Ennead, the creator and her boldness persevere. —Monica Garza, Director of Education 

A spherical sculpture made of golden artificial straw and decorated with straw ornaments and artificial plants.

The Intermediate – Inceptive Sphere by Haegue Yang

Haegue Yang’s The Intermediate—Inceptive Sphere (2016), which recently entered our collection, is both visually and conceptually compelling and a work one must experience firsthand. You have to crouch down to get a sense of the piece, its tactility, and the rich textures of the materials. Though near to the ground, the work has a palpable presence, as it poetically expounds upon the global, exploring the supposed, and fraught, East/West binary. Collecting and employing materials ranging from the banal, here plastic straw, to folk or ritualistic objects, such as a Korean bride’s headpiece and bells used in shamanistic rituals, Yang creates an “intermediate” space, somewhere between the real and artificial, civilization and nature, as well as the human and spirit worlds, and a space you’re invited to enter and engage with. —Jessica Hong, Curatorial Assistant

Silueta Works in Mexico by Ana Mendieta

It is incredible to work for a museum that has one of my all-time favorite works of art in its collection: the Silueta Works in Mexico by Ana Mendieta. In this series, Mendieta blends performance and photography, human and nature, presence and absence in a series that makes you reflect on your relationship to the earth. In these sublime images, Mendieta’s immersion into the landscape of Mexico and the traces that remain show how powerful the forces of nature are in comparison to humanity. Ana Mediata’s work has had a major influence on my own art practice and her work continues to inspire me today. —Chris Hoodlet, Marketing Manager

A small, bronze sculpture of a conical spiral with arms and legs suspended from a wire hovering over a slate disk.

Spiral Woman by Louise Bourgeois

In a 2008 documentary, artist Louise Bourgeois, then 96, quipped in her thick French accent, “My emotions are inappropriate to my size.” I’ve never forgotten that line. Small in stature but bursting with chutzpah, Bourgeois said making art was a way of taming her demons.

Encountering Bourgeois’s work is like a kick in the gut. Part of a series Bourgeois continued over decades, this Spiral Woman, with its diminutive female figure entombed and twirling suspended in midair, pulses with the forces that run through all the late artist’s evocative work: emotion, pain, sexuality, trauma, need, sensitivity, anger, compassion. Its honesty and intensity are infectious, and refreshing. An outlet for the famously tempestuous artist, her impassioned work lives on as a kind of salve for viewers as well. —Kris Wilton, Associate Director of Creative Content and Digital Engagement

Hanging Fire by Cornelia Parker

Cornelia Parker’s Hanging Fire, suspended at the entrance of the show, introduces a mode of thinking critical to the collection. More than half of the works in the ICA’s collection are by women, and many pieces in First Light tackle issues of race, gender, violence, and the related politics of art-making. A well-composed moment of explosion, Hanging Fire deconstructs the dark nature of the fire and extracts beauty from its charred wood orbits. Our contemporary moment of deconstructing norms and systems of oppression requires us to collectively pause, in the midst of the chaos of pain and misunderstanding, to discuss and think, and feel empathy. Given the charged nature of some of the works on view, I find Hanging Fire to be a meditative place to begin. —Lisa Purdy, Visitor Assistant

A sculpture of two glazed white teacups on matching saucers. The cups are fused together to appear conjoined, as are the saucers.

T42 by Mona Hatoum

The impact T42 had on me when I saw it for the first time was out of proportion with its diminutive size and delicate aesthetic. The punny title makes you feel as though you’re in on the joke. You then realize that the joke may in fact be on you, on the expectations and assumptions of coupling, a coupling that perhaps creates codependence, eradicates individuality, and, presented in this manner, borders on the ridiculous. T42 is play on the hypercivilized teatime that’s almost too intimate to feel comfortable. A graceful combination of sweet and discomforting, this piece makes me wonder, is there really a way we can both negotiate this vessel lovingly and fairly? Can it really go right? —Kate McBride, Marketing Assistant

An installation of five ceramic plates displayed on five shelves and printed with the sayings

Untitled by Kerry James Marshall

Kerry James Marshall’s five white, porcelain dinner plates from the multiple Untitled (1998) are printed with Civil Rights slogans such as “We Shall Overcome” and “Black is Beautiful.” Art historically the plates evoke Judy Chicago’s iconic feminist installation The Dinner Party (1974–79), but their political thrust makes me think of the meme that circulated around the 2012 election with African-American laborers next to a photo of the White House and the text, “We Built It.” Who are our objects of leisure and consumption made by and for? Were they made according to ethical labor practices, and if they could speak—as Marshall’s plates appear to—what stories would they tell? —Sam Adams, Curatorial Fellow

Untitled by Doris Salcedo

Doris Salcedo’s untitled work of 1998 is heavy, her manipulation of familiar furniture utterly negating any sense of home and safety. It is akin to piecing together a monument, making the moment of recognition kinetic. At once the question shifts from “What is this?” to “What happened?” —Frank Redner, Visitor Assistant Lead

Rückenfigur by Glenn Ligon

One of my favorite works in the ICA Collection is one I’ve not yet seen installed in Boston. I first encountered Glenn Ligon’s Rückenfigur at the Whitney in 2011. Soon after, ICA Trustee Bridgitt Evans and her husband Bruce promised this seminal work to the ICA. Our collection has and continues to be predominantly comprised of gifts of art from a generous group of individuals who believe that works of great importance – like this – belong in the public realm for audiences to enjoy for generations to come. Rückenfigur is a simple neon sign that reads “America.” The title, “back figure,” is echoed in both the darkened typeface that creates the illusion of approaching the sign from behind, and in the complex interconnectedness of racial and national identity that our country navigates. I spent a long time in front of that work at the Whitney, and have thought of it often since, particularly over the past year. For me, Ligon’s neons evoke equal parts despair and hope; overwhelming the viewer with bold gestures toward the unfulfilled promise of the United States while simultaneously acknowledging, if not insisting, that the viewer is herself an active participant in shaping its future. I still remember the charged feeling in the room, and in my stomach, when the ICA’s Board of Trustees approved the acceptance of this work, Ligon’s first in our collection. It seemed incredibly relevant then, and perhaps more so now. I look forward to seeing it take its place in our galleries in the years to come. —Katie Mayshak, Director of Development

A sculpture composed of a colorful costume covering the body of a mannequin a chandelier-like headpiece decorated with ceramic birds and strings of beads.

A sculpture made of very thick, beige rope or cordwoven together to resemble an abstracted inchworm on a concrete floor.

A color photograph of an older light-skinned woman wearing a yellow blouse and black pants and laughing widely while seated on the edge of a bed.

Soundsuit by Nick Cave, Inchworm by Francoise Grossen, and Lil Laughing, Swampscott, MA by Nan Goldin

I love this trio of works. For a time they were relatively near each other in the gallery, and once I connected them, they just made me smile. Each has a big personality on their own, but together they turn into a vibrant motley crew. I created the following activity that the Teen Arts Council will do this week with all three artworks… “These three pieces went on a cross-country road trip together. Where did they stop along the way? What did they do? Who drove? Who was the DJ? What music did they play? What was the final destination of their epic journey and why? Use your answers to these questions to create a visual “journey map” of their trip.” —Carlie Bristow, Teen Programs Assistant

All Are Welcome for ICA 10 – Commemorating 10 Years in 10 Days with Activities, Performances, Programs, and Free Community Day

2016 is a milestone year for the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA), one of the oldest museums in the United States dedicated solely to contemporary art. It’s the 80th anniversary of its founding in 1936, and on December 10 the ICA will mark 10 years on Boston’s waterfront in its iconic Diller Scofidio + Renfro-designed building. A 10-day celebration, ICA 10, will kick off on Thursday, December 1 with $10 admission and special programming for 9 days, culminating in a Free Community Day on Saturday, December 10 (more details are below or at www.icaboston.org/ica-10).

“When we opened the doors of the new ICA 10 years ago, we knew we were at the beginning of an amazing chapter in our story, as well as in the evolution of the Seaport District,” said Jill Medvedow, Ellen Matilda Poss Director of the ICA. “Public access to the arts and all that art museums offer—inspiration, education, history, economic vitality, and community—are more urgent now than ever for building vibrant cities, celebrating diversity, and strengthening social cohesion and democracy. We’re celebrating this moment with 10 days of activity and engagement with art and artists, everyone is welcome, and we want to see and hear from our members, visitors, partners, and friends.”

PIONEER + CULTURAL ANCHOR

Founded in 1936 as the Boston Museum of Modern Art—a sister institution to New York’s MoMA—the ICA was conceived as a laboratory where innovative approaches to art could be championed. The museum eventually parted ways with MoMA and changed its name to the Institute of Contemporary Art in 1948. As the ICA’s reputation grew around the nation, it paved the way for other institutes and museums of contemporary art as well as artists’ spaces and alternative venues.

Throughout its history the ICA has been at the forefront internationally in identifying and supporting the most influential artists of its time and bringing them to public attention. More recently, the ICA has been pivotal in establishing the careers of artists and performers including Vanessa Beecroft, Shepard Fairey, Trajal Harrell, Faye Driscoll, Cildo Meireles, Cornelia Parker, Cindy Sherman, Bill Viola, Kara Walker, and Rachel Whiteread.

In 2006 the ICA was the first art museum built in Boston in more than 100 years and a pioneer in the transformation of Boston’s waterfront. Since that time, the museum has become a cultural anchor in the Seaport District and enjoyed a significant number of milestones including:

  • Establishing a permanent collection of 20th- and 21st-century artists—notable for Barbara Lee’s gift of the Barbara Lee Collection of Art by Women;
  • Hosting a dynamic schedule of nationally-acclaimed exhibitions, performances, and artist talks;
  • Creating a national model for teen arts education, investing in urban adolescents as future leaders, artists, and electorate. With more than 7,000 teens participating in ICA teen education programs annually, this initiative was recognized with a National Arts and Humanities Youth Program award from the White House in 2012; and
  • Welcoming more than 2 million visitors to the waterfront over the past decade.
ICA 10 DETAILS

The festivities will kick off on Thursday, December 1 with $10 admission for 9 days, culminating with a Free Community Day on Saturday, December 10. Throughout the 10-day celebration, visitors will enjoy the galleries and exhibitions, art-making activities, performances, staff-led spotlight tours, and even become part of visual art on view in the museum. In addition, in conjunction with its sponsorship of ICA Teen Programs, UNIQLO will present a few special surprises and giveaways at the Free Community Day.

For the complete schedule of events, visit www.icaboston.org/ica-10. Celebration highlights include:

All Weekdays

  • $10 admission and ICA staff-led spotlight talks (1:30 PM)

Thursday, December 1 (Free admission 5–9 PM)

  • Island Creek Oyster Bar (ICOB)/Row 34 Chef Jeremy Sewall book signing for Oysters: A Celebration in the Raw and The New England Kitchen (6–8 PM)
  • Island Creek Oyster pop-up raw bar and free shucking demonstrations (6–9 PM)

Friday, December 2

  • Turn back the clock for holiday fun at First Fridays: “Snowball ’06” ($10/free for members, 5–10 PM)

Saturday, December 3

  • Choreographer Heidi Latsky returns with body positive “movement installation” ON DISPLAY, in recognition of International Day of Persons with Disabilities (12–1:30 PM and 3–4:30 PM)
  • Artmaking in the Bank of America Art Lab (2–4 PM)

Sunday, December 4

  • Teen Takeover: Teen Arts Council pop-up talks; a drop-in collective audio project; and The Current, a new program where teens discuss social issues through the lens of contemporary art (10 AM–4 PM)

Monday, December 5 (ICA is closed)

  • Go Digital: ICA followers can vote online for their favorite ICA event of the past 10 years and be registered for a chance to receive a private tour of First Light: A Decade of Collecting at the ICA

Thursday, December 8 (Free admission 5–9 PM)

  • Behind the Scenes: The Artist’s Museum tour with Mannion Family Senior Curator Dan Byers (6 PM)
  • Trunk show featuring three Boston-based studios/artists: Pilgrim Waters, Porcelain and Stone, and Keith Maddy (6–9 PM)

Friday, December 9

  • Gillian Wearing site-specific mural opens on the Sandra and Gerald Fineberg Art Wall in the ICA’s State Street Corporation Lobby; plus Spotlight talks (7 and 8 PM)
  • Films in the Barbara Lee Family Foundation Theater (5:30–8 PM)

Saturday, December 10: FREE COMMUNITY DAY

  • Artmaking in the Bank of America Art Lab: visitors can see themselves projected around the building as part of a special site-specific installation by Boston-based artist Susannah Lawrence (10 AM–4 PM)
  • Talks + Tours: Visitors can go behind the scenes to learn more about the building on its 10th birthday;
  • Performances:
    11:30 AM: Branches Steel Orchestra – Dorchester’s Branches Steel Orchestra brings the traditional calypso music of Trinidad and the West Indies, as well as modern classics of pop, R&B, spirituals, jazz, soca, and reggae;
    1:30 PM: Dances from Everyday Cabaret – Some of the region’s best performers come together in this entertaining revue showcasing a variety of popular styles. With Peter DiMuro, Artistic Director of Public Displays of Motion & Executive Director of the Dance Complex, as emcee and guide;
    3:30 PM: Music from the African Diaspora – Berklee College of Music and Boston Conservatory students from Africa, Brazil, and the U.S. share an intoxicating music mix;
  • The Object Project: Guests can become part of a podcast, looking at idiosyncratic relationships to possessions and collecting, by talking about a beloved object (12–4 PM);
  • Hearts for Art: Visitors can show some love for works in the ICA collection;
  • Free hot chocolate, coffee, and ICA cookies (10 AM–noon, while supplies last); and
  • Giveaways, Japanese calligraphy, and more, courtesy of UNIQLO (sponsor of ICA Teen Programs).
EXHIBITIONS

Two special exhibitions will be on view during the celebration, including:

First Light: A Decade of Collecting at the ICA (through January 16, 2017) – Coinciding with the tenth anniversary of the ICA/Boston’s move to its iconic waterfront building, this exhibition celebrates the museum’s first decade of collecting, is drawn entirely from the ICA’s collection, and features significant new acquisitions. Conceived as a series of interrelated and rotating stand-alone exhibitions, First Light highlights major singular works from the collection, including a monumental cut-paper silhouette tableau by Kara Walker, work from the Barbara Lee Collection of Art by Women, groupings of work by artists such as Louise Bourgeois and Nan Goldin, and thematic and art-historical groupings featuring the work of artists as diverse as Paul Chan, Sharon Hayes, Sherrie Levine, and Cornelia Parker. A new multi-media web platform with artist interviews and commentary from current and former curators was created to mark the occasion.

The Artist’s Museum (November 16, 2016–March 26, 2017) – This exhibition departs from the impulse to collect and connect, bringing together photography, film, video, installation, sculpture, and sound works that use artworks, images, and history as material for new works. These multilayered projects reimagine the lives of other artworks, demonstrating how social history, personal connections, and ideology shape our relationships to objects, images, and the cultures they produce. Among the artists featured in The Artist’s Museum are: Rosa Barba, Carol Bove, Anna Craycroft, Christian Marclay, Xaviera Simmons, Rosemarie Trockel, and Sara VanDerBeek. Engaging the realms of dance, music, popular culture, natural history, image archives, and design–as well as art history–the twelve artists address a constellation of issues such as gender, sexuality, technology, and digital culture, charting forms and themes across cultures and through time.

The ICA invites its social media followers to use #ICA10 to share their thoughts, experiences, and photos on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Gillian Wearing (b. 1963, Birmingham, UK) has created Rock ‘n’ Roll 70 (2015/2016), a monumental, site-specific photographic mural for the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston’s Sandra and Gerald Fineberg Art Wall. On view from December 9, 2016 through January 1, 2018, this new work is the first presentation in Boston of the celebrated artist’s work and was organized by Eva Respini, Barbara Lee Chief Curator, with Jessica Hong, Curatorial Assistant.

Best known for her photographic and video works that intimately capture aspects of our familial and personal histories, Wearing began her career photographing strangers she encountered on London’s streets and continues to explore the nuances of identity, the intersections of public and private, and the performativity of self. Over her career, Wearing has also mined her own life and history, having meticulously sculpted masks of her loved ones and donned them to create eerie self-portraits as her brother, mother, or her own self at an earlier age.

For Rock ‘n’ Roll 70, Wearing asked individuals working with age-progressing technology to digitally enhance self-portraits created at age 50 (her current age) to see what she might look like at age 70. Printed as wallpaper, these aged portraits show the diversity of possibilities of the artist’s future self. They differ slightly or drastically from each other, revealing the limitations of what we believe to be pioneering technology, exploring how identity can be represented, and further emphasizing the uncertainty of what lies ahead.

On top of the wallpaper hangs a framed triptych of photographic portraits, consisting of Wearing at her current age, an enhanced portrait, and a blank space, as the artist intends to make a self-portrait when she turns 70 to complete the triptych. In a world oversaturated by images, particularly “selfies,” Wearing explores the complexities of identity mediated through technology, which is a topic that’s more urgent than ever.

The ICA’s Sandra and Gerald Fineberg Art Wall is dedicated to site-specific works by leading contemporary artists, commissioned annually. Located along the eastern interior wall of the museum’s glass-enclosed lobby, the most public space in the museum, the Art Wall is the visitor’s first encounter with art upon entering the building. Wearing’s photographic mural highlights the diverse range of possibilities for the Art Wall, a fitting site for this installation as it further collapses the public and private spheres. Rock ‘n’ Roll 70 will explore the lobby as a psychological space—the artist’s portraits are confrontational and alluring, discomfiting and thought-provoking.

Based in London, Wearing gained critical attention after winning the acclaimed Turner Prize in 1997. She was nominated for the Vincent Award presented by the Gemeentemuseum/GEM in The Hague, Netherlands (2014) and for the Liberty Human Rights Awards for her public sculpture A Real Birmingham Family (2014). Since the early 1990s, Wearing has been working primarily in video and photography, utilizing the public as her subject matter to investigate what we as private individuals carry with us in the public sphere. With the Internet boom and social media explosion, the public and private realms have all but collapsed. This has become a dominant theme for many contemporary artists and a significant issue for the culture-at-large. Wearing describes her methodology as “editing life,” similar to how we present ourselves to our online public. However, unlike reality culture of our day, which is full of judgment and emotive responses, the artist photographs her subjects and herself with as little subjectivity as possible, contrasting with the type of online personas we wish to portray.

Support was provided, in part, by Jean-François and Nathalie Ducrest and Area9 Group.