Rebirth of The ICA: A Retrospective
A year after moving into its visually striking new home on Boston’s waterfront, the Institute of Contemporary Art was feted with kind words, a grand party and the obligatory cake.
We look back at some key people and principal exhibitions of the past year.
The $51 million building was the first new art museum in Boston in nearly 100 years, according to the Globe’s Geoff Edgers.
It was also the most recent home for the peripatetic museum, which moved 10 times since its founding in 1936 as the Boston Museum of Modern Art.
On Dec. 2, 2006, an opening party was held in the State Street Corporation Lobby, a focal point of which is the Sandra and Gerald Fineberg Art Wall.
Here, ICA Assistant Curator Jen Mergel looks closely at the first work to appear in the Art Wall, “The Divine Gas”, by Japanese pop artist Chiho Aoshima.
“The Divine Gas,” which depicted a weeping forest girl passing gas in billowing lilac clouds, was a favorite of many museum visitors until it was removed from display in late October.
The artist requested that the museum scrape the mural’s vinyl overlay pieces from the wall and cut them into 4-inch squares.
Each step had to be documented in photographs sent to the artist to ensure that pieces weren’t kept as souvenirs or resold as individual artworks.
The massive bronze “Spider” by Louise Bourgeois was a centerpiece of the museum’s “Bourgeois in Boston” exhibition, on display until March 2008.
Spanning six decades of the artist’s output, the exhibition brought together sculptures, prints, drawings and a rare, early painting, all lent from area museums and private collections.