Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston

The Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) is an art museum and exhibition space in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1936 as the Boston Museum of Modern Art, it has undergone multiple name changes and relocated its galleries more than a dozen times. Since 2006, the ICA has occupied a purpose-built structure in the South Boston Seaport District designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro. The institution is distinguished by its long history of introducing significant contemporary and modern art to New England audiences, often as the first American museum to present particular artists or movements.

The museum was founded in 1936 with offices at 114 State Street and gallery space provided by the Fogg Museum and the Busch-Reisinger Museum at Harvard University. Its first president was Nathaniel Saltonstall, a 26-year-old architect who conceived the institution as a renegade offspring of the Museum of Modern Art. The inaugural exhibition surveyed Paul Gauguin, and the first fundraiser, the Modern Art Ball, attracted Gala and Salvador Dalí. In 1937 the museum moved to 14 Newbury Street, its first self-administered space, and charged 25-cent admission. It presented the first survey of Dada and Surrealist art in the area, including Méret Oppenheim's Object (Le Déjeuner en fourrure), and in 1938 sponsored the United States premiere of the Ballet Russe de Monte-Carlo with sets and costumes by Henri Matisse. The museum cut ties with the Museum of Modern Art in 1939, becoming the Institute of Modern Art, and mounted an exhibition of German degenerate art featuring Max Beckmann, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Emil Nolde, and Paul Klee. A 1940 traveling exhibition of Picasso included Guernica, and Frank Lloyd Wright's first United States museum survey was organized. The museum moved to 210 Beacon Street in 1940, then to 138 Newbury Street in 1943, where it assembled the first African American artist survey in New England with works by Romare Bearden and Jacob Lawrence. The name changed to Institute of Contemporary Art in 1948 to distance itself from ideological associations of the term modern. Le Corbusier's first United States museum exhibition followed that year. The ICA moved to the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at 230 The Fenway in 1956, where it organized the first United States museum survey of Roberto Matta in 1958. In 1959 it installed work inside a Stop & Shop on Memorial Drive for Young Talent in New England, an exhibition some consider anticipatory of Pop art. From 1960 to 1963 it occupied the Metropolitan Boston Arts Center at 1175 Soldiers Field Road, a modernist glass-enclosed gallery designed by Saltonstall, then returned to Newbury Street. The ICA was back at the Metropolitan Boston Arts Center from 1968 to 1970, then moved to Parkman House at 33 Beacon Street. In 1973 it found a more permanent home at 955 Boylston Street, a former police station and fire station in a brownstone building, where it remained for 33 years. A 1984 collaboration with WGBH produced Contemporary Art Television, promoting video artists. The move to the current Seaport District location occurred in 2006.

The ICA functions primarily as a museum and exhibition space rather than a traditional collecting institution with a fixed permanent collection emphasis. Its programming has consistently focused on contemporary art in its moment, with particular strength in being the first American museum to present numerous artists and movements. The institution has mounted significant surveys contemporary to their time, including early museum presentations of video and electronic art, as with the 1965 exhibition Art Turned On attended by Marcel Duchamp. The scope extends across media, from painting and sculpture to performance, film, and installation.

The ICA's historical significance lies more in its exhibitions than in a fixed collection, though it has presented landmark shows. The 1937 Dada and Surrealist survey introduced Object (Le Déjeuner en fourrure) to Boston. The 1940 Picasso exhibition included Guernica. The 1950 Edvard Munch survey featured The Scream, and the 1952 Wassily Kandinsky exhibition included works never before seen in the United States. The first Milton Avery retrospective followed in 1953. The 1966 Andy Warhol exhibition presented approximately 40 works including selections from Campbell's Soup Cans and portraits of Jackie Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, and Elizabeth Taylor, plus the first museum screenings of Warhol's films Eat, Sleep, and Kiss. That same year, Warhol and The Velvet Underground performed Exploding Plastic Inevitable at the ICA. The 1968 Monumental Sculpture for Public Spaces placed works by Alexander Calder, Donald Judd, Robert Morris, Louise Nevelson, Claes Oldenburg, and Mark di Suvero across Boston, including Robert Indiana's original 12-foot Cor-ten steel LOVE on City Hall Plaza. The 1976 Claes Oldenburg retrospective was attended by the artist, and the 1977 David Hockney show was the first of his work in the United States. The 1980 exhibition was the first American museum show of purely Dada art. Artists exhibited at the ICA have included Salvador Dalí, Morris tendencies of Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Frank Stella, Jim Dine, John Chamberlain, Nicholas Hlobo, Robert Mapplethorpe, Cildo Meireles, Ólafur Elíasson, Manabu Mabe, and Douglas Huebler, who received his first solo show in 1972.

The ICA's current building was constructed in 2006 in the South Boston Seaport District, also known as Fan Pier, and was designed by architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro. This marked the institution's fourteenth location. The site is near the port of Boston. The building replaced the previous location at 955 Boylston Street, a brownstone that had formerly served as a police station and fire station. The earlier Metropolitan Boston Arts Center, designed by founder Nathaniel Saltonstall and occupied in two periods, featured a modernist glass-enclosed gallery measuring 80 feet long and 33 feet wide, raised 12 feet off the ground on steel supports.

The Institute of Contemporary Art is located in the South Boston Seaport District of Boston, Massachusetts. Its website is http://www.icaboston.org/. The institution operates as an art museum and exhibition space, continuing its role as a major venue for contemporary art in New England. The move to the Seaport District in 2006 represented a significant geographic and architectural shift for the institution, placing it in a newly developed waterfront area of the city.