ICA | 100 Northern Ave | Waterfront

It has a huge collection of modern art, not a huge collection of contemporary art. Cezanne, van Gogh, etc. can't exactly be called contemporary artits.
 
The thing is, MoMa started out as a museum of modern art, and ended up as a museum of Modern art. I wonder if 'contemporary' will get similarly capitalized.

justin
 
The ICA can resolve the contradiction by renaming itself the Institute of Contemporary and Formerly Contemporary Art. Not only does that justify a permanent collection, it also gives them license to acquire art going all the way back to the Stone Age.
:wink:
 
kz1000ps said:
I plan on going Sunday simply because it's free for the day (9 to 9).. is anyone else planning on going? Shall we attempt to meet up? If you're interested, please speak up..!
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I plan on definitely seeing this building Sunday. I dont know exactly what time--it really depends on what happens Saturday night and what time I roll out of bed Sunday. But if some members of the board plan on meeting up I'll really try to make it.
 
The Weekly Dig said:
The New ICA
Rumors of art inside crazy-looking Seaport building

* by Jason Feifer
* Issue 8.49
* Wed, December 06, 2006

After about an hour of mingling, reporters at the Institute of Contemporary Art?s press opening were led into the new building?s 325-seat theatre. It?s a clean, angular place with orange seats and a sign near the stage forbidding ?combustible scenery,? but all anyone could really look at was the view. The back and left walls are clear, so the stage?s backdrop is the harbor. As we waited for the ICA execs to make their speeches, a woman next to me leaned over and said, ?No matter how interesting the speakers, we have this to look at outside.?


She was right, and not just about the outdone speeches. The entire building is like that. In its thoughtful and hyped elaborateness?the large glass elevator, the gravity-defying way it juts out over the water, the floor wrapping up and through the building?this place is at once a centerpiece and a distraction, the artistic competition for everything inside it. By the time you get to the galleries (all 17,000 square feet of which are on the top floor), they feel like an add-on, as if they?re no longer the reason this place exists.


imageThat?s why the museum?s first exhibit, Super Vision, is so smart, even if its premise is a little corny. The concept is a metaphor for the museum itself: exploring how, in an era of changing technology, things are being looked at differently. Design isn?t just about angles and curves; it?s about giving people ?subtle and beautiful, perceptually engaging kinds of experiences,? says chief curator Nicholas Baume.


In the exhibit, you?ll find a lot of literal translations: paintings and sculptures of warped images, a large reflective sphere, dangling balls on which videos of eyes are projected. There?s Jeff Koons?s hyper-realistic stainless steel sculpture of an inflatable plastic bunny, complete with a seam and partially deflated ears. In one corner, in a darkened room by itself, is the most impressive item of the bunch: a glowing, reddish, surprisingly transfixing rectangle. Move your eye, and it pulsates. Stare at it, and it swells. It straddles a line between unique experience and hokey sight gag, and comes the closest to achieving what Baume was talking about.


But mostly, Super Vision succeeds because it knows its place in the pecking order. In these first few months at the new ICA, people will come for the architecture first, the art second. Super Vision doesn?t try to say anything more than ?Yeah, I know, the building?s pretty cool,? and that makes a lot of sense. Whatever else the ICA has up its sleeve, it should save it for when we?re paying more attention.


The architects said they tried to back off from the galleries, leaving them clean, unobtrusive and malleable. It?s true?but ironically, it?s hard not to notice that. The ceiling lets in natural light, and the walls are movable. Walk to the back of either gallery, and you?ll find a connecting hallway (the currently empty Founders? Gallery) that runs along the harbor-side edge of the building. Toward the windows, the floor is slightly see-through; there?s nothing but water below, and it?s a little dizzying. ?We very much like the nervousness that it produces,? said architect Elizabeth Diller, of Diller Scofidio + Renfro Architects, during a tour of the place. In the middle of the top floor, there is the Mediatheque?or in dorky layman?s terms, the Best Computer Room Ever. In fact, it might be the best room in the city. It is small and descending, with five rows of Macs for digital art browsing, and the front is a window that looks down into the harbor. The view cuts off land and horizon, so there?s nothing to see but the constant, muted shrug of the water, which reflects back the subtle shifts in weather. Even with a group of reporters crammed inside, the room felt tranquil and detached. Those computer screens could be filled with hardcore porn, and we?d all still be gazing ahead at the ocean, lost in contemplation.


One day, this building?s novelty will wear off. Architecture?s most exciting when it?s new or terrifically old; but when you?re in the middle, you?re the Hancock Tower?once magnificent for its record-breaking height, and now something the mayor holds a contest to dwarf. But in the meantime, visitors to the ICA will be busy re-jiggering their perspective. Whereas the museum?s squished former Back Bay digs made it seem scrappy and marginal, this is something else entirely. It?s an outsized place, filled only if people come and loiter in its open space (and two-story education center and theatre and Wolfgang Puck caf?) the way they would in its galleries.


And in that case, maybe it?s not so bad that the building?s distracting.
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Link
 
statler said:
One day, this building?s novelty will wear off. Architecture?s most exciting when it?s new or terrifically old; but when you?re in the middle, you?re the Hancock Tower?once magnificent for its record-breaking height, and now something the mayor holds a contest to dwarf.
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Worth noting.
 
briv said:
I plan on definitely seeing this building Sunday. I dont know exactly what time--it really depends on what happens Saturday night and what time I roll out of bed Sunday.
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I hear ya on that count.. I guess I'll have to temper things a bit tonight. I plan on getting there by 11 or 12, maybe even earlier if things work out that way. My only concern is that Sundays are Football Day for me and I want to get in and out of the ICA earlier rather than later so I can catch the tail end of the games that started at 1.

So to Briv, Scott, anybody else, 11 or 12, maybe in the South Lobby?
 
South Lobby 11ish. If you see a guy with a blue ICA pullout from the Globe, that will probably be me.
 
OK. I'm tall and skinny and will be wearing a black North Face jacket.
 
I'll definitely be at the ICA some time during the day, but probably later than 11. Maybe I'll run into you, Scott. (I probably don't know anyone else here by face.)
 
If any of you guys are bringing a camera, there are a bunch of banners around the parking lots advertising the new Fan Pier developments.
Most have slogans like "Fan Pier: It Here!" or "Fan Pier: Luxury at it best!"
I thought it would make a great photo with one of those banners in front of the desolate parking lots. :p
 
By standing out, it's a perfect fit
New ICA shows that Boston has become more accepting of contemporary ideas

By Robert Campbell, Globe Correspondent | December 10, 2006

Everyone seemed to be saying the same thing last week at the party that inaugurated the Institute of Contemporary Art's new building on the waterfront.

The party itself was spectacular. More than a thousand invited guests swarmed over the ICA's many levels. They gathered on the outdoor deck to savor the fantastic view of Boston Harbor at night. They were awed by the powerful surge of the top-floor galleries, which hang out over the deck as if by magic, without visible support. They explored the theater, the glass elevator the size of a bedroom, the tiny Mediatheque where kids will call up images on computers. And of course they checked out the art in those flying galleries, which are lit, in daytime, by a translucent roof.

What people were saying was that they couldn't believe a building so audacious, so venturesome, could be built in -- of all places -- Boston.

They were asking whether the ICA marked a watershed in the history of local architectural taste.

Boston has been widely known, for a generation or more, as a conservative town architecturally, despite its liberal politics. To understand why, you have to know some history.

Boston underwent a long depression in the middle of the last century. Its industries moved south in search of bigger space and cheaper labor. Its harbor -- the reason Boston existed in the first place -- was abandoned for deeper ports elsewhere. Boston politics was a legend of corruption and class conflict.

Boston's great depression lasted from the late 1920s to about 1960. To get a handle on how much the city has changed since then, consider the Back Bay. In the 1960s, almost none of the dwellings in the Back Bay were owner-occupied. That neighborhood's great cityscape of townhouses was chopped up into tiny cheap apartments, largely occupied by students or low-income singles.

Except for the John Hancock Tower -- the one with the weather beacon, not the glass skyscraper -- no significant new building appeared in Boston over a period of more than 30 years.

That's why, when the local depression finally ended, Boston was eager to welcome new development. Too eager. Any development. Good, bad, or indifferent.

Hideously aggressive new office towers, scarily out of scale with their surroundings and surrounded by windy plazas that felt like defensive moats, began to sprout. A whole living neighborhood, the West End, was bulldozed flat, to be replaced by apartment houses that looked as if they belonged in Miami Beach. Seedy but humane Scollay Square became the urban Sahara that is now Government Center. The Massachusetts Turnpike marched like an invading army, leaving a swath of destruction in its path. Mayor John Collins promised a high-rise on every corner of the Back Bay.

After years of that kind of redevelopment, in the mid-'70s Boston citizens rose in wrath. They established a landmarks law, to protect the architecture not only of individual buildings but also of whole neighborhoods. Advocates for architectural preservation learned to play politics. They became a powerful force.

This was a huge countermove to the forces of development. On the whole, it was healthy and necessary. But there was -- and is -- a down side.

The down side is the belief, which a lot of people quite understandably arrived at, that anything old is good and anything new is bad. And that, therefore, new buildings should be faked to look like old ones. Or else not built at all.

Everyone loves old Boston. But phony architecture is not old Boston. They weren't doing it back then.

It's quite true that modern architecture is often disruptive to a historic setting. Modernism as a philosophy wasn't particularly responsive to context.

But that doesn't have to be true. A contemporary building, even a large one, can fit its setting perfectly while, at the same time, injecting some invention and energy. And there are times and circumstances when disruptive is exactly what a new building ought to be, just as we treasure music or literature that shakes us up a little.

Most buildings should be modest background structures, quietly shaping our streets without shouting for attention. But there's a place for the performer building too. And even the background ones can be marvelously inventive in detail, as they so often are in the older Boston, and as they never are in today's imitations.

So, to come back to the ICA, has Boston turned a corner? Is it going to be more accepting of the new, the edgy, the provocative in architecture? I hope so.

Because of its many schools, Boston is continually renewed with a fresh tide of youth. And the current generation of younger people seems to be far more accepting of contemporary ideas than their recent forebears. They didn't have to live through the period of bad development, or the reaction that followed it.

So let's applaud the ICA and, of course, its nervy and creative architects, Elizabeth Diller, Ricardo Scofidio, and Charles Renfro of New York. Let's hope they've broken through to an era of Boston architecture that will be just as exciting as it is thoughtful, responsible, and courteous to its surroundings. We can have it both ways.
 
Had a great time. Sorry I missed you kz1000ps, was tough to get into the museum and you'd be amazed how many tall people have North Face Jackets :wink: , though I did run into Ron. Had to wait 2 hours but it was worth it They had Berklee students doing Motown and free coffee in a heated tent while you waited. The museum was great... not very big but GREAT.
 
Understandable, Scott. Luckily, my wait was only about 10 minutes, and from there it was smooth sailing. The museum was wonderful, although like you (scott) said the galleries were not very big at all. I don't know what the typical ratio of gallery space to overall building size is with most museums, but here it seems rather low. And I wish they would have allowed some time for the theatre to be open for casual exploration. Plus, some of the installations were a bit hokey.

But otherwise the place was enjoyable. The "mediatheque" was exactly what I expected it to be, and I really enjoyed the Brazil room where they had a constant stream of Astrud Gilberto/Stan Getz playing, not to mention the Berklee band in the tent. It was also funny to watch all the kids throwing rocks from the footpath bed into the water.. they'll probably all be gone by this time next year.
 
The new building

At night, lit up, it looks most like a Walmart, to me.
 
It was fun to run into you, Scott. No idea if Briv or anyone else was there, as I probably wouldn't recognize the rest of you by sight.

The Berklee Motown band definitely made the wait much more bearable. I had a good time today, but would like to return when it's less crowded so I can actually pay some attention to the art.
 
I'm gonna get a closer look tomorrow morning and then go inside soon on a free Target Thursday.
 
I almost fell down the stairs two different times in the Mediatheque room. The stairs are very uneven - one short stair, then a long one, then a short one, etc. They're also quite steep, as the room is essentially stadium seating.
 
Bob Campbell said:
This was a huge countermove to the forces of development. On the whole, it was healthy and necessary. But there was -- and is -- a down side.

The down side is the belief, which a lot of people quite understandably arrived at, that anything old is good and anything new is bad. And that, therefore, new buildings should be faked to look like old ones. Or else not built at all.

Everyone loves old Boston. But phony architecture is not old Boston. They weren't doing it back then.

It's quite true that modern architecture is often disruptive to a historic setting. Modernism as a philosophy wasn't particularly responsive to context.

But that doesn't have to be true. A contemporary building, even a large one, can fit its setting perfectly while, at the same time, injecting some invention and energy. And there are times and circumstances when disruptive is exactly what a new building ought to be, just as we treasure music or literature that shakes us up a little.

Most buildings should be modest background structures, quietly shaping our streets without shouting for attention. But there's a place for the performer building too. And even the background ones can be marvelously inventive in detail, as they so often are in the older Boston, and as they never are in today's imitations.

So, to come back to the ICA, has Boston turned a corner? Is it going to be more accepting of the new, the edgy, the provocative in architecture? I hope so.
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Wisdom.
.
 
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