The year began with immersive experiences on both sides of Boston Harbor. In A Place for Me: Figurative Painting Now, a new vanguard of painters depicted the people and places they love in ways that were colorful, surprising, and full of life.

Barbara Wagner and Benjamin de Burca’s room-filling installation Swinguerra brought visitors to their feet with music and dance offering agency, resistance, and community for Brazil’s queer communities of color.

In the ICA Watershed, Revival: Materials and Monumental Forms presented large-scale installations by six artists who reclaim and reuse industrial and everyday materials: Ghanian artists El Anatsui and Ibrahim Mahama and U.S. artists Madeline Hollander, Karyn Olivier, Ebony G. Patterson, and Boston-based Joe Wardwell.

The major fall group exhibition To Begin Again: Artists and Childhood investigated the influences of children and childhood on 40 visual artists from the early 20th century to today, including Jordan Casteel, Francis Alÿs, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Paul Klee, Glenn Ligon, Oscar Murillo, and Faith Ringgold.

A bold site-specific commission by Barbara Kruger recalled one of her best-known works, Untitled (Your body is a battleground), 1989, originally produced as a poster for the April 1989 March for Women’s Lives in Washington, DC.

In María Berrío: The Children’s Crusade, the artist combined watercolor and collaged Japanese paper in stunning large-scale scenes tackling issues of mass migration. 

A trio of commissions brought audiences back to our stage. Liz Gerring’s Harbor, created in two ICA residencies, thrillingly combined movement, newly commissioned music by celebrated composer John Luther Adams performed live by the JACK Quartet, and sumptuous lighting design by Jennifer Tipton.

The commission Family Ball, conceived during the pandemic, is a gripping exploration of partnership and intimacy by the husband-and-wife creative duo of pianist and composer Jason Moran and mezzo-soprano and composer Alicia Hall Moran. 

The season closed with the world premiere of Okwui Okpokwasili and Peter Born’s newest work, adaku pt. 1: the road opens, an ICA commission that imagines a pre-colonial village on the verge of social upheaval through dance, story, and music.

Also presented on our stage, Suzanne Bocanegra’s Honor starred actor Lili Taylor in the role of artist, delivering a captivating lecture on a famed 15th-century Dutch tapestry at the Met with pathos and wry wit.

First Fridays celebrated new partnerships this year, including with Boston While Black and the Teachers’ Lounge, who took over the event with dancing and karaoke.

Works from the ICA’s commission of Simone Leigh for the United States Pavilion returned to the United States as part of a two-decade-spanning exhibition touring to Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles.

Leigh’s presentation in Venice broke Biennale attendance records, drawing more than 650,000 visitors over eight months. It culminated in October with Loophole of Retreat: Venice, a powerful and joyful convening of scholars, artists, and activists from around the world centered on Black women’s intellectual and creative labor. 

Audiences connected with artists in four Artist Voice talks this year, including an intimate and philosophical discussion between curator Jeffrey De Blois and artist Rose B. Simpson.

Simpson’s solo exhibition, Legacies, combined ancient Native American methods of producing clay pottery with contemporary concerns in haunting figurative sculptures. 

For Jordan Nassar: Fantasy and Truth, the Palestinian-American artist collaborated with craftswomen in the region to create imagined landscapes investigating ideas of home, land, and memory using traditional tatreez needlepoint. 

Artist Taylor Davis was invited to curate an exhibition from the ICA’s permanent collection – an ICA first.

For the ICA Watershed, Guadalupe Maravilla created his largest sculpture to date, Mariposa Relámpago (Lightning Butterfly), a “vibrational healing instrument” in a disused bus. Blending symbols and objects, spiritual and folk beliefs, natural materials and sound, Maravilla’s artworks explore the artist’s personal journey of migration, illness, and recovery.

In our most intensive artist engagement to date, Maravilla worked with ICA community partners in East Boston in over the course of eight months around issues of migration and healing, culminating in a series of sound baths in the Watershed space. 

An accompanying presentation in the Watershed’s Harbor View Room highlighted healing methods three different community organizations are using to work with East Boston residents.

The year began with an expansion of our global footprint, as audiences flocked to the 59th International Art Exhibition at the Venice Biennale and the ICA commission of Simone Leigh for the United States Pavilion, breaking Biennale attendance records with nearly 650,000 visitors over eight months. 

Works from Simone Leigh’s presentation in Venice returned to the ICA and to Boston audiences as part of a touring exhibition spanning two decades of the artist’s groundbreaking work in sculpture and video.

At the ICA, the year began with the Virgil Abloh: “Figures of Speech” showcasing the prolific designer and artist’s wide-ranging creative practice and influence. Attending the opening events, just months before his untimely death, Abloh generously spoke with teens and young people hired to staff the accompanying retail pop-up “Church and State.”

An accompanying collaboration between ICA teens and Boston-based artist OJ Slaughter showcased the young people’s creativity and personalities as they styled fashions Abloh created exclusively for the ICA.

Firelei Báez transformed the Watershed with a monumental installation reimagining the archeological ruins of the Sans-Souci Palace in Haiti.

The work’s intricatedly painted surfaces included symbols of healing and resistance, patterning drawn from West African indigo printing traditions, and Caribbean sea life.

Boston-based artist Stephen Hamilton explored the unrecognized historical contributions of West Africa to indigo use in the Americas, drawing on references to West African Yoruba culture and his research conducted in Nigeria, in the Watershed’s Harbor Room.

THE DAY returned nearly three years after an initial Summer Stages Dance @ the ICA residency in 2019. A collaboration among legends — cellist Maya Beiser, dancer Wendy Whelan, and choreographer Lucinda Childs, with music by David Lang— THE DAY explores life and the eternal, post-mortal voyage of the soul.

In-person art-making returned to the museum after a Covid hiatus with Bridging Creativity: Art Lab from Home to Here featuring activities designed by four Boston artists.

In response to consistent demand for teen programming, a major accomplishment of the year was opening Seaport Studio, a new dedicated space for teens with a gallery, creative and gathering spaces, and workshop facilities.

The new space allows for new programs including an innovative Teen Exhibitions Program, through which young people curate and execute exhibitions with support from teaching artists and ICA staff.

In the fall, the first major museum survey dedicated to the pioneering photographer Deana Lawson spanned 15 years of her impactful work investigating and challenging conventional representations of Black life.

Raúl de Nieves’s joyful, opulent sculptures created with beads, sequins, and other common materials referenced traditional Mexican costume; drag, ballroom, and queer club culture; religious processional attire and iconography; and personal transformation.

Summer Sessions concerts brought audiences to the waterfront on Friday nights for lively evenings with local musicians.

The 2021 James and Audrey Foster Prize celebrated Boston-based artists Marlon Forrester, Eben Haines, and Dell Marie Hamilton, who came together for an inspiring Artist’s Voice talk with curator Jeffrey De Blois.

Napoleon Jones-Henderson: I Am as I Am—A Man was the first major museum exhibition for the artist, an influential community member, educator, and mentor in Roxbury since 1974 and  founding member of the influential artist collective AfriCOBRA (African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists).

The ICA continues to serve as a platform and gathering space for our communities, neighbors, and partners such as Jazz Urbane Cafe—the forthcoming arts venue in Nubian Square—which brought the entire audience to their feet.

The year wrapped up with two exhibitions. A Place for Me: Figurative Painting Now celebrated a resurgence of figurative art with eight emerging painters depicting who and what they love, representing a new generation of artists passionate about the possibilities of painting.

Bárbara Wagner and Benjamin de Burca’s Swinguerra, a recent acquisition for the ICA, showcased transgender and nonbinary performers presenting mixed dance styles in Brazil, where music and dance have functioned as discreet methods of political organizing under oppressive regimes.

Acclaimed choreographer Kyle Abraham and his company A.I.M. presented tender, thoughtful dance set to Nina Simone, Bill Evans, Sebastian Bartmann, Nico Muhly, and Beethoven.

At the ICA Watershed, Revival: Materials and Monumental Forms presented large-scale installations by six international artists who reclaim and reuse industrial and everyday materials, deriving inspiration from industry, labor, and the poetic and political power of found goods.

… while Boston-based artist Joe Wardwell created a new, site-specific installation in dialogue with the rich history of labor songs.

The ICA made history at the U.S. Pavilion at the 59th Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia with Simone Leigh: Sovereignty, commissioned in partnership with the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, and on view April 23–November 27, 2022.

The works in Sovereignty extend Leigh’s ongoing inquiry into the theme of self-determination. They will return to the ICA in April 2023 as part of a larger, traveling survey exhibition.

After 18 weeks of closure in spring 2020, the ICA reopened its doors in July, voluntarily closed again in December, and reopened in March 2021.

Virtually and collaboratively organized by the ICA’s curatorial team, i’m yours celebrated the power of seeing art in person, inviting visitors to connect — or reconnect — with favorite works from the ICA collection.

The exhibition’s final gallery offered a salon-style installation of portraits with which visitors could unabashedly interact.

Returning audiences found new resonance with Ragnar Kjartansson’s The Visitors and its themes of connection in isolation.

William Kentridge’s multimedia KABOOM!, a new major acquisition making its U.S. premiere, prompted new thinking about world history by immersing viewers in the experience of the two million African porters used by Colonial forces during World War II.

Hosting programs online offered unusual opportunities to welcome artists from afar, from their own spaces, such has hearing William Kentridge speak about KABOOM! from his studio in South Africa.

Zanele Muholi also joined us from South Africa to discuss their work depicting Black queer communities there.

Shortly before his exhibition opened at the ICA on July 1, 2021, Virgil Abloh joined choreographer Josh Johnson and Ruth Erickson, Mannion Family Curator, for a virtual Artist’s Voice discussion spanning creativity, social justice, and breaking barriers.

Virtual Talking Taste events gave participants a chance to cook along with celebrated chefs based locally or further afield, including Susana Trilling, an expert in Oaxacan cuisine.

Performance offerings also moved online, including popular DJ Brunches and virtual Harborwalk Sounds. Select performers made use of the ICA architecture in their recordings, such as Kweeng Doll, who created a dynamic performance on the Grandstand.

A second ICA Forum on racism, art, and public health brought together a range of speakers from government, public health, and the arts.

In a highlight of the year, the ICA was announced as the commissioner of the U.S. Pavilion at the 2022 Biennale di Venezia, presenting the work of Simone Leigh.

The ICA expanded its ongoing weekly food distribution program this year to include monthly Art Kits featuring supplies and family-friendly activities created by local artists.

For three months leading up to the November 2020 election, visitors could register to vote at the ICA on weekends and Free Thursday Nights.

While Play Date kids programming moved online, free admission continued for families the last Saturday of the month and for youth 18 and under every day.

Participants in ICA Teen programs connected online and in person for mentorship, mutual support, and much-needed creative outlet.

Opening Act

Unbound

What Remains

Home Again

In Material

Looking Out

Closing Act

Every exhibition is the result of collaborative work. In the process of developing this exhibition, the curators engaged in multiple conversations with artists, educators, and professionals within and outside the museum. The ICA Curatorial Department thanks the many individuals we consulted for their guidance, generosity, and partnership, especially our colleagues throughout the museum. We extend our deepest thanks to the artists in the exhibition.

The following individuals helped to install this exhibition and its digital platform: Dirk Adams; Elena Brunner; Matthew Christensen, Editor; Jesse Collins; Acassia Ferreira da Cunha; Zelana Davis, Exhibitions Coordinator; Sophia DiLibero; Adric Giles; Alison Hatcher, Senior Registrar; Gina Janovitz, Graphic Designer; Anthony Montuori; Hailey Mulvey; Shane Murray; Toru Nakanishi, Preparator; Savanna Nelson; Abigail Newbold, Director of Exhibitions; Tim Obetz, Chief Preparator; Ami Pourana, Creative Director; Sopheak Sam, Marketing Associate, Content and Digital; Bella Steele; Carrie Van Horn, Associate Registrar; Kris Wilton, Director of Creative Content and Digital Engagement.

Organized by Jeffrey De Blois, Assistant Curator and Publications Manager; Ruth Erickson, Mannion Family Curator; Anni Pullagura, Curatorial Assistant; and Eva Respini, Barbara Lee Chief Curator.

Installation photography by Mel Taing.

Buoyed by the popular success of Yayoi Kusama: LOVE IS CALLING and critical reception of When Home Won’t Let You Stay: Migration through Contemporary Art, this was a year of exceptional impact and shifting realities.

In summer 2019, the beloved Harborwalk Sounds series packed the waterfront for free concerts in partnership with Berklee College of Music.

Summer 2019 visitors to the Watershed lingered in John Akomfrah’s immersive film installation Purple….

…and a Family Day organized with East Boston partners drew nearly one thousand participants for music, dancing, art, and art-making.

Back in the Seaport, artist Vivian Suter’s colorful canvases transported viewers to her lush Guatemala outdoor studio.

Rashin Fahandej used stories and lullabies to connect with incarcerated fathers in the 2019 James and Audrey Foster Prize, the ICA’s biennial exhibition highlighting four outstanding local artists.

Foster Prize artists Helga Roht Poznanski, Lavaughan Jenkins, Rashin Fahandej, and Josephine Halvorson discussed their work with Mannion Family Curator Ruth Erickson in The Artist’s Voice.

The fall performance season kicked off with full houses for Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s iconic Fase, Four Movements to the Music of Steve Reich, performed by her company Rosas.

In October, ICA Forum: Racism, Public Health, and Contemporary Art convened experts Nicole M. Brookshire, Barbara Ferrer, Steve Locke, and Jeneé Osterheldt to discuss improving health and civic life in Boston with Ellen Matilda Poss Director Jill Medvedow.

Performer and choreographer nora chipaumire challenged and embraced stereotypes of Africa, the black performing body, art, and aesthetics in their raw and visceral “live performance album.”

African American Shaker tradition and history inspired Reggie Wilson and his Fist and Heel Performance Group’s POWER.

Choreographer, performer, and ICA Artist Advisory Council member Faye Driscoll returned to the ICA with Thank You For Coming: Space, the third, and most searingly personal work in the series.

Carolina Caycedo’s Cosmotarrayas, hanging sculptures assembled with handmade fishing nets and other objects collected in river communities affected by the privatization of waterways, captivated audiences.

Tschabalala Self: Out of Body — the artist’s largest exhibition to date — showcased her signature technique combining drawing, printmaking, sewing, and collage to tell stories of urban life, the body, and humanity.

Sterling Ruby’s first comprehensive museum survey examined his range of materials and processes — from ceramics to drawing to quilting — and concerns including culture, institutions, craft, and labor.

Families connected through art and art-making in free monthly Play Dates, first in person…

…and then virtually, after the museum closed along with its Boston counterparts due to the global COVID-19 pandemic.

Teen programs also pivoted quickly to move their work online, and Boston Public School students who rely on credits through the ICA were able to earn them in time.

To serve the East Boston community hard hit by Covid-19, the ICA partnered with The Catered Affair to distribute fresh produce, dairy, staples, and artist-created activities to community partners at the Watershed.

For the 2020 Virtual Gala, artists Virgil Abloh and Sterling Ruby shared an intimate conversation about their work and lives during the pandemic and spring protests against systemic racism.

William Forsythe: Choreographic Objects, the artist’s first comprehensive American exhibition, blurred the lines between performance, sculpture, and installation

—and invited visitors to think through movement.

We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–85  reoriented conversations around race, feminism, political action, and art to highlight the voices and experiences of women of color.

Arthur Jafa’s powerful Love is the Message, The Message is Death offered a nuanced picture of Black life in the United States, which the artist sees as both beautiful and painfully fraught.

Jason Moran, the interdisciplinary artist’s first museum exhibition, explored jazz and its place in American culture through music, the visual arts, and stagecraft.

The MacArthur-winning jazz pianist showcased his talents on stage

and joined artist Glenn Ligon to discuss their collaborative work The Death of Tom in a free Artist’s Voice talk.

Legendary choreographer Twyla Tharp revisited her seminal early works in the multidisciplinary Minimalism and Me in a rare Boston appearance.

Choreographer Trajal Harrell merged history, ritual, and fantasy to reinterpret ideas of the past in Caen Amour.

Huma Bhabha: They Live, the largest survey of the artist’s work to date, presented over two decades of sculpture, drawing, and photography.

The artist joined Eva Respini, Barbara Lee Chief Curator, to discuss her complex visual vocabulary and influences including horror films, sci-fi, and modernism.

In Abby Zbikowski’s abandoned playground, nine dancers performed complex, hyper-physical dance that pushed them to the brink of their capabilities and endurance.

Outdoors, Harborwalk Sounds continued its tradition of attracting locally based talent hailing from across the globe for lively evenings on Boston Harbor.

A popular favorite from the ICA collection, Ragnar Kjartansson’s The Visitors mesmerized audiences all over again.

Less is a Bore: Maximalist Art & Design explored the impulse toward ornamentation, pattern painting, and decorative modes—and filled the galleries with color, pattern, shapes, and “more is more”

…and gave kids and families lots to look at.

The thirteenth installment of the ICA’s annual collection exhibition presented major works showcasing artists’ engagement and entanglement with the everyday.

In the Art Lab, Dennis Nance’s Character Study invited visitors of all ages to develop their unique character ideas by mining the mundane.

Bill T. Jones returned with his poignant and personal Analogy Trilogy, based on oral histories and inspired by W. G. Sebald’s award-winning novel The Emigrants.

Picking up where last summer left off, the Culture Club series presented DJ sets, performance, and visual installations by Boston-area artists for energetic, exploratory nights on the harbor.

Choreographer Will Rawls spent a Summer Stages Dance @ ICA residency developing What Remains, a collaboration exploring the presence, exposure, and erasure of Black Americans with filmmaker John Lucas and poet Claudia Rankine.

Italian visual artist and choreographer Alessandro Sciarroni returned to the ICA with four professional jugglers harnessing discipline, focus, and concentration in a hypnotic reflection on the passing of time.

The ICA opened Watershed season two with new art and educational programming.

John Akomfrah’s monumental, six-channel film installation Purple combined stunning cinematography, archival footage, and a complex sound score to address the impacts of climate change.

In the Watershed’s Harbor Room, artist Evelyn Rydz shared—and solicited—stories of home through her Aquí y Allá (“here and there”) project and Comida Casera (“homemade food”) community events.

Wangechi Mutu’s A Promise to Communicate evoked a world that, despite its increasing potential for collectivity, struggles to communicate in a comprehensive way.

The work invited visitors to explore ideas of public space, communication, and free speech – and to leave their mark.

Mark Dion: Misadventures of a 21st-Century Naturalist, the artist’s first U.S. survey exhibition, examined 30 years of his pioneering inquiries into how we collect, interpret, and display nature.

A highlight of the exhibition, The Library for the Birds of New York/The Library for the Birds of Massachusetts, brought canaries and finches to the galleries.

Dion joined Mannion Family Curator Ruth Erickson for an in-depth free discussion of his work.

and led a hands-on workshop with ICA Teens in his hometown of New Bedford, Massachusetts.

In family programming, the interactive activity Salty > Sour Seas allowed visitors of all ages to consider the changing makeup of our waters.

In Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today artist Jon Rafman offered an unforgettable journey beneath the surface of Boston Harbor in the ICA’s first virtual reality commission.

The critically acclaimed exhibition examined the boundless influence the internet has had on all facets of our lives, from work to dating to privacy to how we understand our bodies and ourselves

and extended beyond the galleries in a museum-spanning performance by Ryan McNamara called MEEM 4 Boston: A Story Ballet About the Internet.

In conjunction with the exhibition, the ICA also organized a robust citywide Art + Tech collaboration with 14 area arts organizations.

An exhibition of photographs by Nicholas Nixon presented the beloved Brown Sisters series in its entirety, alongside contemporaneous works.

On stage, acclaimed pianist Simone Dinnerstein and choreographer Pam Tanowitz paired for a “free and unorthodox interpretation” (New York Times) of Bach’s Goldberg Variations.

Bessie Award–winner Okwui Okpokwasili offered a haunting exploration of erased or forgotten female resistance movements in Nigeria and beyond in Poor People’s TV Room.

And the collective Skeleton Architecture convened black performing artists from across genres and generations for a weeklong investigation of collaborative process, creative strategies, and improvisational practices and an informal performance, the future of our worlds.

Outdoors, Harborwalk Sounds continued its tradition of attracting locally based talent from across the globe for lively evenings on the Grandstand.

An exhibition of recent work by painter Dana Schutz captured imaginary stories, hypothetical situations, and impossible physical feats.

Artist Kevin Beasley presented his densely packed sculptures combining sculptural and acoustic elements.

While Caitlin Keogh debuted a new body of work in the first solo museum exhibition of her paintings.

Opened right before year’s end, We Wanted a Revolution, Black Radical Women, 1965–85  gave overdue attention to the role of women of color in second-wave feminism and art.

Arthur Jafa’s Love is the Message, The Message is Death powerfully considered the joys, traumas, and representation of black life in America through a range of media imagery.

First Fridays continued to attract audiences new to the museum.

The Artist’s Advisory Council, made up of 12 artists, writers, and choreographers, met with museum staff and leadership to share their thoughts and advice about a range of museum-related issues.

The year ended with the opening of the ICA Watershed, featuring the work of video art pioneer Diana Thater.

Artist Nari Ward’s We the People provided a stunning entry for his exhibition Nari Ward: Sun Splashed and an apt motif around which to structure conversations and programs.

Members of the ICA Teen Arts Council worked directly with the artist to help install the work, created from thousands of shoelaces.

In conjunction with the Nari Ward exhibition the ICA hosted a naturalization ceremony in which 137 people from more than 50 countries became U.S. citizens.

In Nalini Malani’s immersive In Search of Vanished Blood, rich imagery streamed through five clear Mylar cylinders that the artist hand painted with a variety of cultural and historical iconography.

Liz Deschenes’s 20-year survey provided visitors opportunities to slow down and consider light, color, and the mechanics of seeing in meditative, photographic works.

Artist Kara Walker spoke about her practice, the monumental Subtlety she installed in Brooklyn’s Domino Sugar Refinery, and her celebrated cut-paper silhouettes in a moving Artist’s Voice talk.

Big Dance Theater brought their unique blend of theater and dance to the ICA in celebration of the company’s 25th anniversary.

The 2017 James and Audrey Foster Prize showcased work by internationally recognized Boston-based artists Sonia Almeida, Jennifer Bornstein, Lucy Kim, and Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor…

…all working physically with the body in some way.

In the Bank of America Art Lab, artist Bennie Flores Ansell’s Fish Out of Water invited participants of all ages to think about migration.

The Artist’s Museum explored how artists work with other artists’ work, reimagining the lives of artworks and tracing unexpected connections across cultures and history.

Visitors to the Barbara Lee Family Foundation Theater experienced lively music and dance, pop-up performances at First Fridays events, free participatory performances at Play Dates and community days, free open rehearsals, and more.

Bessie Award winner Beth Gill presented her evocative new work Brand New Sidewalk.

Outdoors, the popular Harborwalk Sounds concert series, organized in conjunction with Berklee College of Music, brought impressive emerging musicians and countless spectators for free evening performances on the waterfront.

Across the harbor in East Boston, the ICA started work on the Watershed, which will transform a disused former copper pipe factory into an industrial space for immersive art unlike anything in Boston. Opening Summer 2018.

Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College 1933–1957 brought new light to the legendary institution, making waves with critics and audiences alike.

In conjunction with Leap Before You Look, former Merce Cunningham dancer Silas Riener restaged Cunningham’s long-lost 1957 work Changeling at the ICA.

A standout hit of the 2015 Venice Biennale joined the ICA Collection. Artist and Academy Award–winner Steve McQueen’s powerful video installation Ashes makes its U.S. debut at the ICA in February 2017.

Lebanon-born artist Walid Raad brought his profoundly affecting work — “a set of fantastic tales spun from a few hard facts, with the live equivalent of an operatic mad scene at the center” (New York Times) — to the ICA.

Outside the Lines: National Convening for Teens in the Arts brought together extraordinary young leaders from Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, Miami, Queens, and San Antonio.

ICA Teens participated in a creative activity led by artist Sandrine Schaefer during Outside the Lines: A National Convening for Teens in the Arts.

Dubai-based artists Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh, and Hesam Rahmanian brought their collaborative, eclectic worldview to the ICA in their first U.S. museum exhibition.

A monumental installation by Kara Walker joined the ICA Collection.

Choreographers Faye Driscoll and Yanira Castro brought audiences to their feet—and onstage.

More than 30 performers from the dance and disability community took to the Vivien and Alan Hassenfeld Harborway to explore viewing and being viewed in Heidi Latsky’s body-positive “movement installation” ON DISPLAY.

Chicago-based artist Diane Simpson presented elegantly constructed, architectural sculptures in her first major museum exhibition (at the age of 80), to glowing reviews.

Social media continued to be a place of enthusiasm and engagement, with Instagram followers increasing almost 300% this year. (Follow us at @icaboston!)

Arlene Shechet’s first museum survey, All at Once, presented more than 150 objects spanning two decades of innovative, experimental art-making.

The ICA partnered with Caribbean Fashion Week for a smash-hit First Fridays featuring forward-looking fashion.

Boston artist Ethan Murrow transformed the Sandra and Gerald Fineberg Art Wall with the monumental drawing Seastead (using up more than 400 Sharpies in the process).

Artist Erin Shirreff investigated the complexities of representing sculpture in two dimensions.

while Geoffrey Farmer filled the galleries with 365 offbeat characters…

and a sweeping survey of almost two millennia of Italian sculpture, all made from cut-out photographic images.

Artist Dave Ortega worked with visitors of all ages to create illustrated storylines in the Bank of America Art Lab.

Ugo Rondinone’s Moonrise sculptures greeted visitors to the ICA all summer long.