2015-2016 – ICA Highlights

2015–2016
A year of connections, dialogue, and reaching across boundaries, borders, and eras.

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

“Extraordinary” —New York Times

“Genius abounds” —Boston Globe

“The biggest show the ICA has ever mounted… You should visit.” —New Yorker

“A midcentury cultural Camelot” —Wall Street Journal

“An ambitious exhibition” —New York Review of Books

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.

I just really want to be my best self all the time in the museum.

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—ICA Teen Bea Espanola

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.

ACQUISITIONS

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

Diane Simpson show at ICA is superb

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—Boston Globe

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.

Eva Hesse’s Unforgettable Legacy

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).

Working with the ICA on my temporary wall drawing Seastead in 2015, I was asked to present ideas and deliver a project that was deeply ambitious for my practice and challenging for the viewing public. I am eternally grateful to have been given this opportunity and thankful for the changes it fostered. I can track many of the new experiments and creative endeavors I am involved in back to this piece and the ways in which it forced me to reconsider space, the public, and the relationships we have with temporal artworks.

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—Ethan Murrow

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.

Thank You!
We couldn’t do what we do without you.

Image Credits

Photo by Danita Jo.

Installation view, Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College 1933–1957, Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, Oct 10, 2015–Jan 24, 2016. Photo by Liza Voll.

Silas Riener reprises Merce Cunningham’s 1957 Changeling. Photo by Liza Voll.

Steve McQueen, Ashes, 2002–15. Installation view, Steve McQueen, Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris, 2016. Courtesy the artist, Marian Goodman Gallery, New York/Paris, and Thomas Dane Gallery, London. © 2016 Steve McQueen.

Walid Raad, Scratching on things I could disavow: Walkthrough, 2016. Performance. Photo by John Kennard.

Photo by Kristyn Ulanday.

Photo by Kris Wilton.

Kara Walker, The Nigger Huck Finn Pursues Happiness Beyond the Narrow Constraints of Your Overdetermined Thesis on Freedom–Drawn and Quartered by Mister Kara Walkerberry, with Condolences to the Authors, 2010. Cut paper and paint on wall; gouache and ink on paper, approximately 57 feet (1737.8 cm); sixteen cut paper elements, dimensions variable; seven framed works on paper, each 11 1/2 x 15 inches (29.2 x 38.1 cm). © 2016 Kara Walker

Faye Driscoll, Thank You for Coming. Photo by Maria Baranova.

Heidi Latsky, ON DISPLAY. Photo by Liza Voll.

Installation view, Arlene Shechet: All at Once, Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, Jun 10 – Sep 7, 2015. Photo by John Kennard.

Fashion at First Fridays: Caribbean Dream, in collaboration with Caribbean Fashion Week. Photo by Danita Jo.

Erin Shirreff, Monograph (no. 3), 2012. Five archival pigment prints, each 34 x 46 inches. Albright Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York. Edmund Hayes and Sarah Norton Goodyear Funds, 2014. Courtesy Sikkema Jenkins & Co. © 2016 Erin Shirreff

Geoffrey Farmer, The Surgeon and the Photographer, 2009-ongoing. Paper, textile, wood, and metal, Dimensions variable. Vancouver Art Gallery. Purchased with funds from the Jean MacMillan Southam Major Art Purchase Fund, Phil Lind, Vancouver Art Gallery Acquisition Fund, Canada Council for the Arts Acquisition Assistance Program, and the Michael O’Brian Family Foundation. Installation view, Geoffrey Farmer, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, 2016. Photo by John Kennard. © 2016 Geoffrey Farmer

Geoffrey Farmer, Boneyard (detail), 2013. Paper, wood, and glue. Dimensions variable. Installation view, Geoffrey Farmer, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, 2016. Photo by John Kennard. Courtesy the artist. © 2016 Geoffrey Farmer

Artist Dave Ortega. Photo by Liza Voll.

Left: Ugo Rondinone, MOONRISE. east. april, 2005. Cast aluminum, brown enamel, and wooden plinth, 73 5/8 x 41 3/8 x 43 1/4 inches (187 x 105.1 x 109.9 cm). Courtesy of Gladstone Gallery. © 2016 Ugo Rondinone. Right: Ugo Rondinone, MOONRISE. east. may, 2005. Cast aluminum, brown enamel, and wooden plinth, 74 3/4 x 59 x 47 1/4 inches (189.9 x 149.9 x 120 cm). Courtesy of Gladstone Gallery. Photo by Danita Jo. © 2016 Ugo Rondinone.

Photo by Danita Jo.