ICA

[justin]

This baby needs a new thread, so here's Campbel's apercu from today's Globe: (http://www.boston.com/news/globe/living/articles/2006/05/28/alone_on_the_waterfront_in_south_boston_the_unfini shed_ica_is_a_bold_presence/?page=full)

The Boston Globe
ARCHITECTURE
Alone on the waterfront in South Boston, the unfinished ICA is a bold presence
Museum, slated to open in Sept., dominates its site
By Robert Campbell, Globe Correspondent | May 28, 2006
Sometimes a building looks best while it's still in the process of being built. A bold construction of steel and concrete can possess a sculptural power that sometimes fades when smoother, more polite finishes are applied.

It's a legend in the world of architecture that today's best known American architect, Frank Gehry of Los Angeles, who designed MIT's dramatic Stata Center, long ago looked at one of his buildings under construction and suddenly decided it looked great that way. He responded by attacking his conventional pink stucco house in Santa Monica, wrapping it with what appeared to be unfinished construction, much of it junk materials. Chain-link fencing was used for skylights, driveway asphalt paved the dining room floor, and exposed metal and glass erupted at crazy angles.

The resulting house was a delight. Daylight fell in patterns through the chain link. It was fascinating to see the demure pink dwelling surrounded by apparent chaos. Visiting was like finding your grandmother in a madman's cage. The house made Gehry famous.
These thoughts came to mind on a recent tour of the new Institute of Contemporary Art, being built on the South Boston Waterfront. I'm not saying the ICA looks better now than it will when it opens Sept. 17. But it looks and feels great, even -- maybe especially -- when enveloped by wind-driven rain and choppy seas.

For one thing, in all the recent bad weather, it felt big and strong, breasting the elements with ease. A lot of people were worried that the ICA, on an edge of Boston Harbor with nothing much around it, would look exposed, isolated, and lonely. Not so. The building dominates its site in a way I hadn't predicted, nor had Jill Medvedow , the ICA's director, who gave me the tour.

The upper floor, which contains the main gallery space, thrusts out above the Harbor Walk and the water, with nothing to hold it up except its structural muscle of steel trusses. It's a bold gesture that enables the building to take command of its site.
To get factual, the ICA has about the same floor area as three floors of a typical downtown office building. The only people who don't think it looks big are the architects, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, a New York firm long known for innovative art projects, and more recently for innovative architecture.

Liz Diller, on the phone, sounds amazed. ``The ICA will be dwarfed by the new buildings that will be built around it," she says. She seems to think of her building as a pet: ``You can sort of hold it in your hand." But she doesn't want it gentle, either. ``We want it to remain rough and tough," she says. A pet iguana, maybe.

The building will never again look quite so bold as it does now. The wood-paved Harbor Walk, when it reaches the ICA, will widen out and tilt up to form a seating slope -- ``the grandstand," the architects call it -- where visitors, perhaps picnicking, will sit outdoors, sheltered by the galleries above, to enjoy the view of boats and harbor. White-painted drywall will cover the columns and beams and the great steel trusses. But the point of the building, of course, is to show art, not to show off itself.

One detail has been controversial. On the seaward side of those top-floor galleries, the architects proposed a lenticular glass wall. Such a wall would be clear and transparent when you looked straight at it, but at both sides, where you'd be seeing it at an angle, the view would gradually blur. The view would thus follow you as you walked along the wall, clearing and fading.

Diller says that everywhere in the building, she tried to frame the view in different ways and sizes. ``The
building calibrates the view; it serves it up in small doses," she says. She thinks looking at the whole harbor all the time might be boring. The lenticular wall would unfold the view gradually. The building would not be passive, but would actively respond to the view.
The ICA's leaders killed the lenticular wall, not for reasons of cost but because they couldn't resist opening up the whole seascape panorama at once. But the lenticular wall was basic to the architectural concept. The panoramic view is great, to be sure, but something has been lost. Visitors to an art museum don't want to become passive oglers of scenery.
The new building is a huge step for the ICA. It is triple the size of the converted police station the organization long occupied on Boylston Street in the Back Bay. There's space for classrooms, a computer room, a generous lobby, a store, a small theater. Almost the entire construction cost of $40 million has been raised, although more will surely be needed to endow maintenance and operations. The museum has also begun to build the permanent collection it has never had. It hopes to become, says Medvedow, `` a museum of the 21st century."

Someday the new ICA will have an architectural context. It will cease to stand all by itself. Developer Steve Karp has gained government approval for the redevelopment of Pier 4, just across a narrow slip of water from the ICA. Karp says he'll develop a new park where Anthony Athanas's landmark restaurant, Anthony's Pier 4, now stands. Farther in on the pier, opposite the ICA, will be a hotel, offices, restaurants, shops, and condos, for a total of a little more than a million square feet of floor area -- as compared with the ICA's 65,000. On the ICA's other side, the long-delayed Fan Pier project is moving forward under developer Joseph Fallon.

When all that architecture (yeah right -- justin) is in place, the ICA's bold, memorable shape will be needed to keep it visible. The building will become a brand logo for the museum. In the meantime, the September opening promises to be, certainly, the architectural event of the year in Boston.
Robert Campbell, the Globe's architecture critic, can be reached at camglobe@aol.com.
I'm sorry to see that lenticular wall gone (the glass did look transparent in the last update on the late forum); it sounded like a cool idea. On the other hand, it might have been frustrating to go up there and not be able to take in the whole view. Maybe they could have made it opaque on the sides and transparent in the middle, or switchable?

http://www.icaboston.org/Files/Images/NewICA/ConstructionSlideShow/construction_ss_founders.jpg/

In any case, I can't wait to see it finished. It already exceeds Boston's quota of great architecture for the 21st century.

justin

[xec]

Originally posted 4/29/06.

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[callahan]

Great pictures! Thanks for posting them. I haven't been down there to see it. It's the building I'm most excited about!

[vanshnookenraggen]

I remember seeing the model for this building years ago and thinking "WTF?! They can't be serious."

Now I think it is one of the most attractive buildings in the city. I can't wait for it to be done.

Also, I think it will look even more stunning when it is juxtaposed against all the crap that is being built in the SBW.

[ckb]

I can't decide if I agree with the decision to fore go the "lenticular glass" or not. I think it will turn out to be a good decision -- on the other hand, I think it would be an interesting exhibition, sometime in the future (1 year, 5 year anniversary?) to deploy the as-designed glass.

I, too, continue to be really impressed with this building -- definitely the best execution of the "fold" concept I've seen so far.

[vanshnookenraggen]

I, too, continue to be really impressed with this building -- definitely the best execution of the "fold" concept I've seen so far.

I agree, infact I really hate the "fold" concept but this is really nice.

[statler]

ICA says goodbye to a home that was a little too humble

By Geoff Edgers, Globe Staff | June 3, 2006

It is a charming building, the sandstone face a perfect match for the Back Bay. But for too many years, the Institute of Contemporary Art has been known not for what it is, but what it lacks.

Without a storage area, the ICA had to close for weeks between shows. Without a loading dock, workers had to shuffle art through the front door. A few months ago, an exhibition featuring the work of Thomas Hirschhorn had to be shut down for a time because of fire code violations.

Tonight, with little fanfare, the ICA will host its final event inside the Boylston Street space it called home for more than 30 years. The New Group, made up of ICA supporters largely in their 30s and 40s, is having a party, with the theme "Past, Present, and Future."

Then the ICA will vacate the troublesome building, except for keeping a few offices there until the museum's new $51 million home on Boston's waterfront opens in September.

"I kept wondering, `Are we going to have a closing event, a final one that really closes the building?' " said Tim Obetz, an ICA employee who has worked on exhibits since 1988 . "But trying to close one building and sort of synchronize that whole thing with the new one, I think, was too much."

"I'm sure there will be many private moments as we clean out," said ICA director Jill Medvedow. "But all of our energy is focused on opening in September."

The New Group isn't ignoring the old ICA. The party's co-chairwoman, Lucy Moon, 19 months old when the ICA moved to Boylston Street, said organizers picked through photos and films in the museum's archives. They're being turned into a video loop, which will be projected throughout the galleries during the party.

This is to remind attendees that the ICA's history didn't begin when Diller, Scofidio + Renfro was commissioned to design its sleek new building.

``This is where they finally settle down," says Moon, 32. ``We're trying to recognize that."

Medvedow says she's going to miss the gray, slate roof she looks out on from her office. Obetz thinks of the 2003 Carsten Holler show, when a 62-foot steel slide was installed in the museum for visitors to ride.

He also remembers the succession of street people, including Walter Smith and ``Jack," who took up residence behind the building, in an alley sheltered from the rain and heated by the ICA's fans.

``The new space will obviously be a better space to display art," says Obetz. ``But certain elements will be lost. The last show that was up here, the design show `Living in Motion: Design and Architecture for Flexible Dwelling,' I think it'll be much more difficult to make that successful in our new gallery space. The designer came up with these curved walls in the different sections that made it dynamic and interesting."

None of the ICA's limitations mattered much in May 1975, when 1,500 people packed the opening party, which was hosted by the future Senator John Kerry's first wife, Julia.

Since its founding in 1936, the ICA had moved 10 times, sometimes after only a year. Back then, it seemed to have found a proper space. ``Three times [larger] than what the Institute has been used to," director Gabriella Jeppson said when it opened in 1975 .

Cambridge architect Graham Gund had converted the shuttered Back Bay Police Station No. 16 into a space suitable for art. It was a strange job. When he reported to the site, Gund found that the police were still tying their horses to a neighboring building.

Also, one corner of the ICA building had settled, the result of the MBTA tunnel underneath. That made it impossible to remove the many columns installed for support. Gund designed the central staircase to incorporate some of the columns.

``In the end, I think it worked out very well for its time, and they had quite a good run," says Gund. ``For some of the things they want to do today, you want more square footage. Now they want to collect art and have their own collection. But that [Back Bay] building is in a great location."

In that home, the ICA had problems operating almost immediately. While Medvedow has raised almost all of the $62 million for the current fund-raising campaign, the old ICA was so strapped for cash it had to install rugs instead of wooden floors in some spaces. Debt piled up, and two years after the museum opened on Boylston Street, Jeppson (now De Ferrari) resigned to go back to school, studying art at Harvard.

``We had no money, no endowment, no capital gifts," she said. ``We were always in debt. I don't remember one day when we didn't have to worry about money."

Judith Fox (then Hoos), exhibitions curator in 1975 and 1976, also found the building a challenge. ``There was no loading dock, there was no freight elevator, so all the art had to come through the front door," she said. ``There was no storage space, so you had to have long gaps between exhibitions. Then there's the big stairway in the center, which was a whole lot of fun for people watching but didn't give you control of light and as much gallery space as was needed." Still, the space was an improvement over previous homes.

Fox said she is interested in the new ICA. As for the old ICA, she won't miss that space as a museum. ``I don't think anyone is going to," she said.

Geoff Edgers can be reached at gedgers@globe.com.
Link (http://www.boston.com/ae/theater_arts/articles/2006/06/03/ica_says_goodbye_to_a_home_that_was_a_little_too_h umble/)

[castevens]

I walked by the building a few weeks ago. It looked really cool. I hope it inspires that area to become developed. I think I'm going to re-open the McCourt land thread on that subject

[ChunkyMonkey]

Here's a link to a Greater Boston episode on the new ICA.

http://www.greaterboston.tv/features/gb_20060404_ica.html#

[DowntownDave]

ICA in much grimmer conditions:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v106/NelsonAndBronte/ICA/ICA0624-01.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v106/NelsonAndBronte/ICA/ICA0624-02.jpg

How does the cardboard box fill in the gap between art and life? Can a box _represent_ a box and yet also _be_ a box? Are these boxes real, or merely carefully worked in encaustic? Alternatively, could these boxes be praised as a slapdash, broadly painted collage of paper, oil, print, and cardboard?

Oh, wait, the museum isn't open yet, I guess its just a bunch of boxes...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v106/NelsonAndBronte/ICA/ICA0624-03.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v106/NelsonAndBronte/ICA/ICA0624-04.jpg

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http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v106/NelsonAndBronte/ICA/ICA0624-06.jpg

[lexicon506]

Please don't tell me that the stuff on the roof is permanent. It must be going away before the opening, right??

[PaulC]

How does the cardboard box fill in the gap between art and life? Can a box _represent_ a box and yet also _be_ a box? Are these boxes real, or merely carefully worked in encaustic? Alternatively, could these boxes be praised as a slapdash, broadly painted collage of paper, oil, print, and cardboard?

Oh, wait, the museum isn't open yet, I guess its just a bunch of boxes...



don't be so sure that it's not art:
http://www.mfa.org/collections/search_art.asp?recview=true&id=35394&coll_keywords=&coll_accession=&coll_name=&coll_artist=&coll_place=&coll_medium=cardboard&coll_culture=&coll_classification=&coll_credit=&coll_provenance=&coll_location=&coll_has_images=&coll_on_view=&coll_sort=2&coll_sort_order=0&coll_package=0&coll_start=1

[DowntownDave]

The stuff on the roof is indeed permanent, but the renderings seem to show it concealed by an opaque cover.

Maybe I'll pile a bunch of boxes together and see if I can sell them to the MFA as a tribute to the 'soulless life of the office worker' :)

[citytect]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v106/NelsonAndBronte/ICA/ICA0624-06.jpg

Nice picture.

[kz1000ps]

Museum sees weeks-long construction delay

http://img272.imageshack.us/img272/3042/11546785514910fo2.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

By Geoff Edgers, Globe Staff | August 4, 2006

The Institute of Contemporary Art will announce today that construction delays have forced it to postpone next month's opening of its $51 million home on the South Boston waterfront.

Director Jill Medvedow said yesterday that the remaining work involved dozens of minor details, including such matters as floor finishes and the installation of lights, and not major construction problems.

But the decision has the ICA scrambling to reschedule programs, exhibitions, and parties once set to kick off Sept. 10. ICA officials would not give a new date for the opening, but said the delay would last ``weeks, not months," according to Steve Corkin, chairman of the building committee.

Medvedow made the decision to postpone on Wednesday, two days after she received a progress report from construction managers. She told the 36-member board of trustees of the decision yesterday in a noon conference call.

``Our building is beautiful, it's close to completion, and it works," Medvedow said in an interview. ``But you only get one chance to make a first impression. When we open, we are going to hit the ground running. In the long life of this building, this is a very insignificant and brief hiccup."

ICA trustees would not describe the work that remains. But they said that the stakes are high for the project, the first new museum in Boston in nearly a century and the first major project to be built in the United States by architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro .

Slated until now to open to the public on Sept. 17 after a week of events for donors and civic leaders, the 62,000-square-foot building represents a dramatic upgrade from the ICA's cramped former space on Boylston Street. Defined by its glass exterior and an 80-foot cantilever stretching toward the ocean, the museum triples the ICA's gallery space and allows it to collect art for the first time.

``To me, it would be a shame to go this far with such a great building and an important building, and open a building that isn't perfect," said Nick Winton, an ICA trustee and a member the 12-person building committee.

Many of the high-profile design features -- the 166-square-foot glass elevator, the 325-seat theater -- would have been finished by Sept. 10, various building committee members said.

In interviews yesterday, ICA officials, architect Ricardo Scofidio, and construction company manager John Macomber said that the remaining work was not major. Among the pending tasks -- termed ``minutiae" by one ICA trustee -- was the need to test the building's ticket counter and climate control system.

``The feeling was, we can't postpone it much later than now," Paul Buttenwieser, chairman of the ICA board of trustees, said yesterday. ``If we're wrong now . . . all we have is a few weeks' delay. If we're wrong [later], we're in a lot of hot water."

The decision to postpone was not difficult, Winton said.

The time difference between our planned opening and the [new] opening was short enough that we didn't feel it was that big a negative," he said. ``The biggest negative would be to open without being able to enjoy or really show off the building."

The ICA has been the lone bright spot of development on Fan Pier, a 21-acre parcel between the John Joseph Moakley US Courthouse and Anthony's Pier 4 restaurant.

Long owned by the Pritzker family of Chicago, the land has been used mostly for parking, though local developer Joseph F. Fallon, who recently purchased it, hopes to begin building a hotel, residential, and office buildings next year.

The ICA, founded in 1936 and nearly bankrupt at times during the mid-1990s, has been able to raise more than $60 million for the museum project. Over the last five years, its membership has increased from fewer than 500 to 2,500.

The opening week was to have included special donor galas, member previews, and the Sept. 17 grand opening to the public. ICA officials said all those events would be rescheduled once the opening date is announced. The same exhibitions planned for September will open later in the fall.

In addition, performances scheduled for the theater this fall will also take place on the new schedule. ICA officials said the new opening week would include an additional evening gathering to accommodate the greater number of people joining as members.

``We're lucky that the invitations for a lot of the events hadn't gone to print," said Barbara Lee, a trustee and member of the building committee. ``It's really no big deal. Anybody who has ever renovated a bathroom or a kitchen knows that things take longer than were expected. It's definitely a disappointment that we're not opening exactly on time. But we're still going to be pretty close here."

ICA board members said that they began to sense a potential problem with the schedule as early as last year.

In October, the ICA hired an owner's representative to oversee the work being done by Macomber. The ICA replaced Seamus Henchy & Associates, a New York company, with Skanska USA Building Inc., which had employees based in Boston.

Late Monday afternoon, Skanska delivered its progress report to Medvedow, a ``punch list" that she said made her realize the ICA might need to delay its opening.

In interviews, Medvedow and members of the building committee said that they didn't hold Macomber responsible.

``Macomber, our architects, Skanska, and the ICA have worked together very cooperatively to get the building done," Corkin said.

The ICA isn't the first cultural institution to face a delay. The Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, for example, wasn't dedicated until 2003, a decade after its planned opening. Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, in the midst of a massive expansion plan, has already moved the opening date of the project once, from 2007 to 2009.

``The long-term implications are zero," said former ICA director David Ross, who has also served as the director of the Whitney Museum of American Art and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. ``In the short term, a lot of people are going to have to change their travel plans."

Geoff Edgers can be reached at gedgers@globe.com.

? Copyright 2006 Globe Newspaper Company

[jass]

Anybody know if the Hynnes/ICA subway station will be renamed?

[Waldorf]

Anybody know if the Hynnes/ICA subway station will be renamed?

Probably just Hynes or Hynes/Mass. Ave.

[IMAngry]

To Auditorium.

Key laughter track.

[statler]

ICA progressing, but no opening date yet

By Geoff Edgers, Globe Staff | August 17, 2006

``Look at that," Melissa Kuronen said as she stood on the fourth floor of the still- unfinished Institute of Contemporary Art earlier this week. ``Lights on the stairs."

Downstairs, construction workers hammered and drilled. Charles Renfro, one of the building's architects, took a final walk-through before scooting to Logan for a flight back to New York. Upstairs, Kuronen, the ICA's director of communications, took stock of one of the many changes made in the few days since she last toured the space. That's when she noticed the guide lights had been installed on the concrete steps in the museum's so-called `` media tech" space.

``Every time I come back here, I feel like they're making huge strides," said Paul Bessire, the ICA's deputy director for external relations, who was standing nearby.

But not enough progress, he conceded. That's why the ICA recently postponed its planned September opening until later in the fall. Much of the explaining has fallen to Bessire and Kuronen who, between them, have given dozens of tours of the ICA's new building over the summer.

``People have been totally understanding," said Bessire. ``You just don't want to open up a museum until it's done."

The ICA still isn't prepared to give a new opening date. There are hints, though, that its leaders are cautiously hopeful that, come late October or early November, the $51 million waterfront space on the Fan Pier, with its glass walls and cantilever stretching to the ocean, can finally open for business.

One way to gauge the timetable: Those scheduled to play at the new ICA through October were being asked to either reschedule or find another place to appear in town. Performers on the calendar for November were, as of this week, asked to stay put.

``It's not great when you book a season and you have to change your plans, but this isn't the first time it's happened," said Rachel Cohen, the booking agent for Les Ballets Jazz de Montreal, a company originally scheduled for October.

The company will instead premiere a new work by choreographer Aszure Barton in upstate New York, then repeat the piece at the new ICA at a rescheduled appearance in the spring.

Other arrangements have also been made for Brazilian singer Cibelle, originally set to play the ICA on Sept. 21. Instead, she will perform at the Somerville Theatre that night. World Music/CRASHarts, which is presenting events at the new ICA during its 2006-07 season, is also working to find another venue for the Bebe Miller Company, originally set to perform Sept. 28- 30 at the ICA.

Inside the new building this week, it was clear that much work has to be done before opening. There were signs of progress. The upstairs galleries need merely to have the concrete floors polished. Stylish steel railings have been installed on the central stairway. The orange seats are in place in the 325-seat theater.

On the other hand, the central glass elevator, 166 square feet, was only partially built. The majority of the ceilings on the first floor were exposed, still in need of drywall. Dirty clay lay where the floor of the gift shop should be, and many details -- rails on the outdoor grandstand, glass doors meant to border the outside patio, a ticket desk -- hadn't yet been put in place.

Walking through the upstairs gallery, Bessire was asked if there were days when he wondered if, perhaps, the ICA should have tried to push for its original September opening. No, he said.

``We want to be sure we open strong," he said.

As he spoke, the din of construction began to die down. It was mid-afternoon, when the construction crews typically wrap up for the day. Could the ICA have finished up by pushing the workers into overtime?

That wasn't an option. The ICA, Bessire said, is pleased to have raised more than $60 million, putting it less than $2 million from its fund-raising goal. That doesn't mean it's willing to go over budget, a certainty if it had paid for overtime to open in September.

Geoff Edgers can be reached at gedgers@globe.com.

Link (http://www.boston.com/ae/theater_arts/articles/2006/08/17/ica_progressing_but_no_opening_date_yet/)

[JS38]

Metropolis Magazine article on ICA:
http://www.metropolismag.com/cda/story.php?artid=2301

[laramaro]

The Institute of Contemporary Art Announces Opening Date, December 10, 2006
Capital Campaign Exceeds Goal, Raising an Unprecedented $65 Million
October 18, 2006

The Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) will open its new waterfront museum on Sunday, December 10, 2006, with a free, 12-hour community day. The celebration was rescheduled due to construction delays. The ICA also announced that gifts to the capital campaign have reached $65 million, surpassing the museum's fundraising goal of $62 million.

"As we approach our grand opening, we are enormously pleased to announce the tremendous success of the campaign and the unwavering support of our community," said Jill Medvedow, Director of the ICA. "Our new museum embodies all of our artistic, architectural, and civic aspirations, enabling us to connect contemporary art to the wider culture, create opportunities for artists, and teach and inspire our young people through the arts."

The ICA is the first art museum built in Boston in nearly 100 years and the only museum in the city devoted exclusively to exhibiting and acquiring contemporary art. It is also renowned architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro's first building in the United States.

The iconic new museum features a dramatic folding ribbon form and a cantilever that extends to the water's edge. The 65,000-square-foot building triples the exhibition space of the previous facility and enables the museum to feature exhibitions of a size and scope never before possible. The ICA will present up to four exhibitions at a time, including thematic and solo exhibitions, showcases for emerging artists, and the first permanent collection in the museum's 70-year history. A 325-seat theater and mediatheque enable the museum to expand its offerings in the performing arts, film, media, and technology.

On Grand Opening Sunday, visitors will be admitted free of charge from 9 am to 9 pm to tour the new building and view the inaugural exhibitions. Festivities will include family-oriented activities and live performances. The Grand Opening of the ICA is sponsored by Bank of America, John Hancock, and State Street Corporation. Grand Opening Sunday is presented by Target. (Seating for performances is limited; tickets are required. Tickets are free and are available on a first-come, first-served basis on the day of event at the admissions desk.)

Capital Campaign
In April 2000, the ICA Boston launched the most ambitious capital campaign in its history to build, endow, and program the new waterfront museum. The campaign has galvanized the Boston community from leading philanthropists to teens participating in ICA programs, from major corporations to family foundations. Lead gifts have come from longtime supporters as well as from new donors, greatly increasing the museum's base of support. Over 770 gifts were received from more than 20 states, including 22 gifts of more than $1 million.

ICA trustee Barbara Lee kicked off the campaign with a lead gift of $5 million from the Barbara Lee Family Foundation, which donated a total of $6.75 million. "The ICA's donors have helped make history on the Boston waterfront," said Lee, Honorary Chair of the capital campaign, who led the fundraising effort with Co-Chairs Robert Davoli and Ellen Poss. "The leadership of our trustees?who generously contributed more than $33 million?and the support of art lovers and community leaders in Boston and beyond have made this visionary project a reality."

Named spaces and programs at the ICA include: Bank of America Art Lab; Putnam Investments Plaza; State Street Corporation Lobby; Charles and Fran Rodgers Education Center; Paul and Phyllis Fireman Family Digital Studio; Glass Elevator, Gift of Anthony and Beth Terrana; Barbara Lee Family Foundation Theater; Louis I. Kane Board Room; Poss Family Mediatheque; Paul and Catherine Buttenwieser Gallery; Kim and Jim Pallotta Gallery; and John Hancock Teen Education Programs.

The ICA raised more than $7.5 million from the corporate community, including gifts from Bank of America, John Hancock Financial Services, Putnam Investments, and State Street Corporation, a 250-fold increase in corporate contributions since 2000. Foundation giving also was a key factor to the success of the campaign, with a $3 million anonymous gift and support from the Kresge Foundation, which made a $1.5 million challenge grant to the ICA to increase its donor base. Other significant gifts include grants from Jane's Trust, the Paul and Phyllis Fireman Foundation, Hunt Alternatives Fund, and The Lynch Foundation.

General Information
The Institute of Contemporary Art's new waterfront facility is located at 100 Northern Avenue in Boston. The museum will be open Tuesday and Wednesday, 10 am ? 5 pm; Thursday and Friday, 10 am ? 9 pm; and Saturday and Sunday, 10 am ? 5 pm. Admission is $12 adults, $10 college students and seniors, and free for members and children 17 and under. Admission is also free for all visitors on Target Free Thursday Nights from 5 pm ? 9 pm. For more information, call 617-478-3100.

The ICA's official media sponsors are The Boston Globe, WHDH-TV, and WBUR-FM.

The ICA's official performing arts media sponsor is The Boston Phoenix.
From http://www.icaboston.org/Home/Information/PressReleases/New%20Press%20Release(20)

[statler]

New ICA to open Dec. 10

By Geoff Edgers, Globe Staff | October 18, 2006

After weeks of construction delays, the Institute of Contemporary Art will announce today that its new building will open to the public on Dec. 10. That puts the opening nearly three months later than originally planned, and on a waterfront where daytime temperatures usually hover in the low 40s.

Museum leaders had considered waiting longer, but said they felt they needed to open as soon as they could.

``You're never going to have total certainty," said Paul Buttenwieser , chairman of the ICA's board of trustees. ``But the public's been waiting, we've been waiting, and we're just raring to go."

The museum postponed the slated Sept. 17 public opening with only weeks to go, citing small but significant construction problems. The $51 million building will be the first new art museum in Boston in nearly a hundred years.

ICA director Jill Medvedow yesterday downplayed the delay as ``a very, very minor blip." But it has meant rescheduling performances planned for the ICA's new theater in October and November.

The ICA stressed that money was never an issue. In fact, today the museum is also going to announce that it has raised $65 million for the project, $3 million more than its original goal.

By pushing the opening into December, the ICA had little wiggle room as it worked to schedule a series of private parties and member events between Thanksgiving and Christmas. For the public, that left Dec. 10, the second Sunday in the month.

It also means the ICA will open to the public the weekend of Art Basel Miami Beach , among the country's most prestigious contemporary art fairs.

``This is definitely Plan B, maybe even Plan C at this point," former ICA director David Ross said yesterday. ``But you've got to get it open. They've got to start making some money. They've got shows to do and projects and commitments to other institutions."

Joseph Ketner , chief curator at the Milwaukee Art Museum and former director of Brandeis University's Rose Art Museum, said the new date would complicate scheduling for many art world luminaries who've had the Miami fair on their calendars for a while.

``I'm very excited for the opening, but this is awkward timing to piggyback onto Art Basel," he said . ``My plane tickets are for me to be in Miami through that weekend. So I'll need to check and see if I can change them."

ICA deputy director Paul Bessire said the museum would take advantage of the scheduling. Before the public opening, the ICA will host a series of parties in the new building early in December. Then the ICA will take a group of donors to Miami from Tuesday to Friday, returning in time for the Sunday shindig.

The new building, sitting on a prime waterfront lot on Fan Pier, marks a dramatic upgrade for the contemporary art museum, tripling its gallery space and allowing it to collect art for the first time.

World Music/CRASHarts , which has signed on to program events in the ICA's 325-seat theater, has spent much of the fall shifting performances to other dates, and other venues. In recent days, Ronald K. Brown/Evidence , originally set for five ICA shows in late November and early December, moved to the Cutler Majestic Theatre. The ICA agreed to shift Ten's the Limit, a showcase of local dancers, from mid-November to the spring.

``I'm not upset, I'm frustrated as anyone would be who has to call a ticket buyer and has to explain to them, `I'm sorry, it's not open,' " said Maure Aronson , executive director of World Music/CRASHarts. ``I am enormously relieved and looking forward to the opening."

ICA officials said they were pleased that they wouldn't have to reschedule any art exhibitions. The December festivities will largely stay the same, they said, though STREB, a New York dance company, will no longer perform at the opening.

Activities on the ICA's outdoor plaza will largely depend on the weather. The average high temperature for Sept. 17 is 72 degrees; for Dec. 10, it's 43.

``We were always going to have a tent," said Medvedow. ``Now, we're going to heat our tent."

Geoff Edgers can be reached at gedgers@globe.com.
Link (http://www.boston.com/ae/theater_arts/articles/2006/10/18/new_ica_to_opendec_10/)

http://cache.boston.com/bonzai-fba/Globe_Photo/2006/10/18/1161178686_0399.jpg

Now that you guys brought it up, the mechanicals are really going to piss me off. :evil:

[statler]

A vision fulfilled at harbor's edge
Museum a frame on surroundings

By Robert Campbell, Globe Correspondent | December 1, 2006

From cramped and awkward quarters in an old police station in the Back Bay, the new Institute of Contemporary Art has emerged into the light like a cave dweller into sunshine. When the museum opens next week, the public will see the most inventive, most interesting piece of local architecture since the Hancock Tower of a generation ago.

There are a lot of ways to describe the new ICA; that's part of its richness. One way is to talk about how it relates to its site. The site is in South Boston, at the edge of the harbor. With the possible exception of a lighthouse, there's probably never been a building more intensely involved with the sea. The ICA and the harbor enjoy the architectural equivalent of a dating relationship.

The ICA's architects, who are partners in the internationally recognized firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro of New York, play many games with the water. The museum's top floor, for example, which contains the main galleries, thrusts forward toward the harbor like a telescope. The floor hangs there without visible support, held by powerful steel trusses in the walls. The glass wall at the end is like a lens, and from there visitors can stand and look out across the water.

They will see skylines and islands, planes, lobster boats, pleasure craft, bridges, cars, and off to each side, even a few hardy pedestrians. They'll be voyeurs of the busy city.

Or take the small auditorium called the Mediatheque, which is mostly for kids and their laptops. This room slopes to frame a very different seascape. Its glass wall points downward, framing a view of nothing but waves. "It's like a screen," says Elizabeth Diller. "The mood of the water changes all the time." She thinks of the ICA as being, in part, a huge machine for collecting views of the world outside. By framing them in unexpected ways, the building makes them into art .

Diller and Ricardo Scofidio -- Charles Renfro is a more recent partner -- are a married couple who first became known for their art, not architecture. Their installations often commented ironically on pop culture. A famous one used models and photographs to investigate the many cultural meanings and myths embedded in "The American Lawn," just as they've done with the water here.

In 1999, they received the first MacArthur "genius" grant ever awarded to architects, a $375,000 windfall. The prize allowed the partners to devote more time to their architectural practice. Both are also professors of architecture, Diller at Princeton, Scofidio at Cooper Union.

When they were chosen in 2001 to design the new ICA, they had built very little. "We wanted someone who hadn't yet done a prominent building in the United States," says ICA director Jill Medvedow . "The ICA has a long tradition of supporting the work of emerging artists."

Many feared that the ICA would feel lonely and isolated on the mostly empty waterfront. That hasn't happened. The big simple shapes are bold enough to command the site. As Medvedow says, "This is a building with strong muscles and strong lines."

The architects are as good at details as they are at big ideas. Take the wood, for example. It's Santa Maria, a gray-brown hardwood from South America. Starting at water's edge as paving of the Harborwalk, the wood surface acts like a continuous wide carpet. It approaches the building, bending and stepping upward to become a kind of outdoor bleacher. It continues from there into the building, to become the floor of the ICA's 325-seat indoor theater, where films will be shown and live performances given. The wooden "carpet" then curls upward to become the rear wall of the theater, then curls again to become the ceiling , then continues outdoors as the underside of the gallery.

From outside, you can trace the path of the wood through the building as a brown folding ribbon on the facade. It works as a sort of brown wrapping paper, enclosing and defining the parts of the building that are public but are not gallery space.

The art galleries at the top of the building, by contrast, are enclosed in pale surfaces of stucco and translucent glass -- materials that speak of light. Where the lower parts of the building rise out of the ground, the galleries seem to have come down from the sun. The white interior walls are washed with light from north-pointing skylights. At night, the glass will glow, becoming a lantern floating in the air above the harbor.

The building is filled with similarly expressive ideas. The elevator, for example, is an entire room that moves from level to level, big enough to carry 50 people, with floor and ceiling like those of the rooms it opens onto.

As it rises, it offers a series of framed and varied views of the harbor through its glass wall. "It's like a sofa in front of a TV," says Diller. "The building is a visual tease, almost like porn. We wanted to distribute the view in small doses."

One aspect of that tease is missing. At the water end of the galleries is a space the ICA calls the Founders' Gallery, with that voyeur's view of harbor and city.

Originally this wall was to be made not of clear glass but of panels covered by a lenticular film, resulting in glass that is clear when looked through directly, but which gradually blurs at both sides.

The loss of this wall is the one distressing feature of the ICA. As board members and staffers came to the construction site, they were wowed by the view and insisted that the glass be clear. But what the architects had planned, brilliantly, was a way to convert the harbor view into one more work of art for the ICA collection.

Today the view is terrific, but it is virtually the same as from any high-rise boardroom in Boston. It isn't art, and the ICA could have done better.

The ICA arrives as a sort of miracle. Its birth was plagued by problems. The proposed huge Fan Pier redevelopment, of which it was originally supposed to be part, collapsed years ago. The ICA went ahead bravely and alone.

Then it was dogged by construction problems. The general contractor, Macomber Builders, fell into disarray, partly the result of a disaster last April when scaffolding on a Macomber job fell on a Boston sidewalk and killed three people.

By the time of the accident, the ICA had already asked another builder, Skanska USA Building Inc., to take over management of the project. Meanwhile, construction costs were rising faster than they had in decades. (The ICA's final construction cost is about $41 million; $37 million was the projected cost when the design was first made public.)

The public opening, originally set for September, was delayed and is now scheduled for Dec. 10, though festivities for donors and art-world figures begin today. Even by the public opening, details and finishes may still be in progress. As is common with out-of-town architects, a local firm, Perry Dean Rogers Partners, has been working with the New Yorkers.

Diller Scofidio + Renfro admit they learned a lot from doing the ICA. The firm is now on a roll, though, partly thanks to this success. Other choice commissions have been streaming in. The most interesting, perhaps, is the renovation of the High Line in Manhattan, an abandoned elevated rail line that is to be turned into a 20-block-long aerial park.

The architects remember that Medvedow, way back at the beginning, told them she wanted "an important civic building." Medvedow herself recalls asking for "a civic destination, a modest - sized building with a lot of presence, a place that brought people down to the harbor."

They've more than achieved those goals.

Globe architecture critic Robert Campbell can be reached at camglobe@aol.com.
Link (http://www.boston.com/ae/theater_arts/articles/2006/12/01/a_vision_fulfilled_at_harbors_edge/)
http://cache.boston.com/bonzai-fba/Globe_Photo/2006/12/01/1164966667_5165.jpg
http://cache.boston.com/bonzai-fba/Third_Party_Photo/2006/12/01/1164975857_7641.jpg

[kz1000ps]

NECN had a 4 minute piece on the architecture of the ICA during their noon-time newscast at 12:17. And since they repeat the newscast at least a couple more times, tune in at 1:17 or 2:17 to see it.

[palindrome]

One of the best projects in Boston in the last decade.

[aws129]

I can't wait to see this building in person!

[xec]

http://i147.photobucket.com/albums/r289/trixecol/0612020067.jpg

[bosdevelopment]

who was the ass hat that designed this piece of crap? I could eat shrooms and come up with something that looks better.

I'm in this area once every couple months and I can't help but constantly cringe at the monstrosity. I put it in the same category as city hall and is, imo
considerably uglier.

It looks like some hippie houses built in concord in the 70's around the decordova area. Doesn't blend in with its sorroundings whatsoever. Generally a horrid waste of an otherwise amazing parcel.

[aws129]

Are you joking?

This is shaping up to be the best building in Boston in decades. It takes spectacular advantage of its sight and will hopefully inspire surrounding developments to match its design quality.

Do you just not like contemporary architecture? Should it have been red brick?

[justin]

I put it in the same category as city hall and is,

That's his one statement I wholeheartedly agree with.

justin

[bosdevelopment]

My apologies for the sub par sentence structure and poor grammar. I've been out of it all day.


This building looks like a warehouse with tiny sails on the roof. Underneath the roof is a hanging 80's style RGB projector that you'd find on a transatlantic swissar flight circa 1991.

There's no symmetry or balance. The eye isn't drawn to any point on the building from any angle. The outside material looks like vinyl siding.

Once the new shine fades, it will undoubtedly be viewed as another civic disaster.

I don't know the slightest about architecture, but 9 joe blows out of 10 would look at this and tell you the same thing.

[statler]

Doesn't blend in with its sorroundings whatsoever.

It should look like a parking lot? :?:

[briv]

This building is getting tons of press. Its absolutely everywhere, and not just architecture mags either. There's a nice little spread on it in the current Time Magazine.

Id say the ICA has accomplished what they set out to do with this building--that being, to get everyone's attention. There's no question about it, the building will draw people, at least initially. We'll see if the art keeps them coming or scares them away.

[justin]

I expected so much of this building that I get a disproportionate sense of disappointment when I see the small blemishes that the actual execution puts on the brilliance of the conceptual design, like the mechanical superstructure, or those bizarre handles on the wall next to the bleachers. I guess that's what you get when from architectural theorists' first building:

"What do you mean, 'we have to put the fans somewhere'?!?"

I still love it, though.

justin

[statler]

the small blemishes that the actual execution puts on the brilliance of the conceptual design, like the mechanical superstructure


I think that's more than just a small blemish. Seems more like a major mistake.

And I agree with Campbell that the decision to skip the lenticular film on the front window was a bad move but at least that is correctable.

[KentXie]

I have to agree with with BosDev on this building. It looks like a boxy spaceship with it's entrance ramp open, ready to load cargo in it. This is probably one of the most overated buildings in Boston. I like contemporary design but this building is no where close to awe inspiring. Someone posted a picture comparing it to a shipping crane awhile back. I expected something much better.

[Mike]

I hope Fallon doesn't surround that gem with more of his crap.

[lexicon506]

If there was a way to just cut off all that crap on the roof, I would absolutely love the building. As it is now I still like it, but those clunky mechanicals take away so much from the building itself.

[ablarc]

If there was a way to just cut off all that crap on the roof, I would absolutely love the building. As it is now I still like it, but those clunky mechanicals take away so much from the building itself.
Amateur architects.

[xec]

The problem isn't that there's crap on the roof but that it's intentionally left in plain view. The architects probably subscribe to the same architectural aesthetic that considers the Chinatown garage on of the most beautiful buildings in Boston. The fix is simply to replace that dark transparent mesh with something opaque and lighter in color.

[Waldorf]

What's worse is that the building is blank and empty on the street side. This and the Moakley Courthouse both embrace the water, but have total disregard for the streetscape.

[sidewalks]

Within five years you won't be able to see those mechanicals...the building will be surrounded by other development, and from the street, the roof will not be visible.

[JaysonL]

As usual, the discussion on this board is focused on the aesthetics of the architecture from blocks away. A bit shallow in my opinion but rather typical for those who enjoy throwing in the word ?hippie? whenever they?re confused or angry about something.

I?m holding off on calling this a success or failure until I?ve had a chance to actually go through it. Hopefully, the discussion will turn a bit more insightful once people get a chance to fully experience the building?from the inside out.

[sidewalks]

As usual, the discussion on this board is focused on the aesthetics of the architecture from blocks away. A bit shallow in my opinion but rather typical for those who enjoy throwing in the word ?hippie? whenever they?re confused or angry about something... Hopefully, the discussion will turn a bit more insightful once people get a chance to fully experience the building?from the inside out.

mmhmm, all us hayseeds sure is excited to find out whether Mr. Jayson thinks this buildin is purty...

[bosdevelopment]

As usual, the discussion on this board is focused on the aesthetics of the architecture from blocks away. A bit shallow in my opinion but rather typical for those who enjoy throwing in the word ?hippie? whenever they?re confused or angry about something.

I?m holding off on calling this a success or failure until I?ve had a chance to actually go through it. Hopefully, the discussion will turn a bit more insightful once people get a chance to fully experience the building?from the inside out.

I wash myself with a rag on a stick

[BostonSkyGuy]

Hopefully, the discussion will turn a bit more insightful once people get a chance to fully experience the building?from the inside out.

The mechanicals on the roof are going to look like crap regardless if the inside is the greatest place on earth.

[kz1000ps]

While I agree that the mechanicals don't look good, I honestly gotta say that I didn't notice them one bit until people here started complaining. Overall, the exterior is rather bland, if not a little fugly, and I guess for me they just blended in with the overall picture. Still, Diller + Scofidio deserve a slap on the wrist.

But what I've seen of the inside, based on the NECN video footage, I am VERY intrigued to see the interior. Some of the spaces look downright spectacular, especially the little lecture hall that sticks downwards from the cantilever and looks straight down at the water. And I guarantee I'll go through their doors within first month to see just that if nothing else.

Even viewed through a video camera this room was just stunning

http://img214.imageshack.us/img214/3910/photo5po7.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

[tocoto]

While the building should stand on its own merits, the most bland exterior is the back of the building which in this case faces the street. It is viewed over a beat-up old parking area full of litter, chain link fencing and piles of dirt and debris. The sides and front are a lot better, but they are diminished as well by the crummy surroundings. It may be impossible to really see this bulding for what it is until the "neighbrhood" is cleaned up a bit.

[aws129]

I don't understand why people don't like the exterior.

It has interesting massing with the dramatic cantilever, the steps (as grand an urban gesture as any) provide an inviting public space, the extensive use of glass should activate the exterior (because people can see all the activity going on inside), and the "ribbon form" that weaves through the various spaces unites the whole structure.

The building materials are not especially flashy -- unlike, say, Gehry's Bilbao Guggenheim -- but are appropriate given its industrial environment. Contrary to what some people have said, the building fits in well with its surroundings; it does sit on the site of former maritime industrial activity, after all. I'd venture that any resemblance to cranes or shipping containers is at least somewhat intentional.

[briv]

... I'd venture that any resemblance to cranes or shipping containers is at least somewhat intentional.

I'd say, definitely. I posted this in a thread on the old board. Those cranes sit just down the shoreline from the ICA. I'm sure Diller+Scofidio noticed them:

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y99/briv1/ICAcomp.jpg
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y99/briv1/ICAcomp2.jpg

[jass]

While the building should stand on its own merits, the most bland exterior is the back of the building which in this case faces the street. It is viewed over a beat-up old parking area full of litter, chain link fencing and piles of dirt and debris. The sides and front are a lot better, but they are diminished as well by the crummy surroundings. It may be impossible to really see this bulding for what it is until the "neighbrhood" is cleaned up a bit.
I agree
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y17/jamesinclair/IMG_5541.jpg

[Waldorf]

Looks like a scene of some outpost in the Mohave Desert. Strange.

[castevens]

haha, yes it does. I can't wait until the area around it is developed

[callahan]

Yeah, this area is in serious need of some landscaping.

[DudeUrSistersHot]

As usual, the discussion on this board is focused on the aesthetics of the architecture from blocks away. A bit shallow in my opinion but rather typical for those who enjoy throwing in the word ?hippie? whenever they?re confused or angry about something.

I?m holding off on calling this a success or failure until I?ve had a chance to actually go through it. Hopefully, the discussion will turn a bit more insightful once people get a chance to fully experience the building?from the inside out.

I wash myself with a rag on a stick

I wish i had a rag...

I don't know about you guys, but I can't wait for mistah Jayson to post his opinion on the building.

[Scott]

I don't understand why people don't like the exterior.

I like it and Sunday at 9AM I'll find out if I like the interior.

[Lurker]

http://img132.imageshack.us/my.php?image=p10100225uslz5.jpg

For those that will feel vertigo in this room, just remember it used to look like this.

[justin]

As usual, the discussion on this board is focused on the aesthetics of the architecture from blocks away.

Well, that's one of the main points of view on any building. Streets matter,

But you may be onto something here: this is a building for looking from, not at. You can tell it's a building designed by conceptual artists (and not just by the mechanicals). It breaks up neatly into a collection of gestures, i.e. ideas which aren't significantly more cool visually than they are on paper. And cool they are: the dramatic cantilever, the Swissair monitor and its horizonless view of the water, the ribon with its inside/outside ambiguity, and the sadly abandoned wall of lenticular glass (I don't even know exactly what that would look like). I like all of those ideas, and I like the fussless efficiency with which they're put together to make up a building. There's no fat on this one whatsoever.

In particular, this building has no time for being pretty: no curves, no makeup. While I certainly don't find it hard on the eyes, the ICA appeals primarily to the mind. That probably explains why the rag crowd has such a hard time with it (though I can't quite explain why some of the people complaining that it looks like a spaceship are the same ones swooning over the R2D2 in the Back Bay).

Given that every last Akron in this country is building a wildly sculptural art museum, the ICA is a breath of fresh air.

Damn those mechanicals.

justin

[statler]

and its horizonless view of the water

Does anyone know if this has been done before? It seems like such a clever idea, I'm suprised that this would be the first building to use it. Does anyone know of any other buildings that have a similar feature?

[statler]

How they did it
They had to get the land. They had to get the money. And they had to stay true to their risky vision -- even if it meant building on an undeveloped waterfront site.

December 6, 2006

IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE a get-to-know-you breakfast, a chance for the new director of the Institute of Contemporary Art to sit down with a powerful trustee. Before the coffee had even cooled at the Charles Hotel restaurant, Paul Buttenwieser stunned ICA head Jill Medvedow with his news.

Well-known for his cultural philanthropy, the Belmont psychiatrist had been on the ICA board for six years. As he saw it, life at the museum had become dismal. No money, no prestige, no art collection. I'm on the way out, he told her.

Caught off guard, Medvedow made her first important request as museum director.

Please, she asked. Could you give me a year?

He gave her eight. On Sunday, Buttenwieser's patience, and Medvedow's drive, will be rewarded as the ICA opens its $51 million home on the waterfront, the first new art museum in the city in nearly 100 years. The road has not been easy. To succeed, ICA leaders had to raise more money than ever in the institution's history, in a city historically dismissive of contemporary art. They faced battles with their neighbors, government regulators, and their own construction company. And with only weeks to spare, they had to delay their glitzy opening.

If they had failed, they would merely be fulfilling expectations, and remain a blip on the city's cultural radar.

"It's one thing for the Modern or the Whitney . . . to raise $60 million," says David Ross, the ICA's former director. "It's another for a small, cutting-edge institution like the ICA."

Building muscle
They said we couldn't do it.

The six words became Medvedow's mantra as she met with city officials, cajoled donors, or picked up a shovel to signal when the building broke ground.

The skeptics had a point. By the time Medvedow arrived in 1998, attendance, which had peaked in 1991 at more than 120,000 visitors, had fallen to fewer than 16,000 a year. The nomadic museum had moved 10 times since its founding in 1936. Its late-'90s home, a former police station on Boylston Street, was so small the museum had to close between shows. There wasn't enough room to move out borrowed works and keep visitors coming through.

The ICA also couldn't acquire art. Dependent on the largesse of wealthy collectors, museums recognize that a permanent collection serves as an important signal of status.

In the '80s and early '90s, under Ross, a director with a flair for attention-grabbing shows, the ICA drew crowds, particularly for a controversial exhibition of Robert Mapplethorpe photography. But by the mid-'90s, Ross had moved on. So had the ICA's buzz.

By hiring Medvedow, 52, a scrappy New Jersey transplant, the trustees took a calculated risk. She had started up galleries in Seattle, and the contemporary art program at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. But she had never run a museum.

In public, Medvedow, not quite 5-foot-2, came across as peppy, warm, eternally optimistic. Behind closed doors, she developed a reputation for being fearless, unyielding, even difficult. She wouldn't take no for an answer.

Yet no is what Medvedow got when she asked Sheryl Marshall, an art collector who made her money in venture capital, to join the ICA's board in 1998. Not giving up, she enlisted salon owner Mario Russo, a longtime trustee, who invited Marshall to a dinner at his Beacon Hill home.

All her reasons for not joining -- business and fasmily commitments, the seemingly overwhelming work that might go into repositioning the ICA -- seemed to evaporate as she stared at the massive Shelburne Thurber photograph of an empty apartment on Russo's wall.

"I just looked around and I just realized contemporary art was something I always loved, that he was right," said Marshall. "I was being foolish saying no."

Yet at her first ICA meeting, Marshall looked around, surprised.

"And I said, 'This is the first board I've been on that has no quote , unquote downtown white guys,' " Marshall said.

By that, she meant business leaders with clout -- the kinds of people who populated the boards of the city's cultural giants, the Museum of Fine Arts and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Her first recruits included Henrique de Campos Meirelles, then president of Bank of Boston, and Bob Davoli, president of Sigma Properties. Davoli led to Jean-Francois Formela, a senior partner at another venture capital firm, Atlas Venture.

The outspoken Marshall also helped recruit staff. In 2000, Medvedow sent Paul Bessire, who m she was trying to lure away from the Museum of Fine Arts, to visit Marshall at her office.

"I said, this is not the [expletive] MFA," Marshall remembers telling the ICA's future deputy director, who had managed the MFA's institutional fund - raising efforts. "This is a different crowd, and people were not going to be driving up with three generations of money to be the first ones to write checks for tens of millions of dollars.

"To me, this was all about the new Boston."

A 'free' piece of land
Ideas were easy to come by on Fan Pier, a 21-acre swath between Anthony's Pier 4 and the John Joseph Moakley Courthouse. For years, development proposals rolled into City Hall like trawlers on the harbor.

The question became who could actually pull off a project on this desolate section of the waterfront. For city planners, this was one of Boston's last, great, developable spaces. The idea needed to be bold.

Chicago's Pritzker family, which owned Fan Pier, had a plan. In 1999, they proposed creating the largest waterfront development in Boston's history. Hotels, condos, office towers. City leaders liked the idea -- with one caveat. As part of their approval, the Pritzkers had to give up a 3/4-acre sliver right on the water to a cultural site.

This was Parcel J.

Parcel J sat in the midst of a wasteland of parking lots, and a mile away from the South Station MBTA stop. Not exactly a prime spot for a new museum, particularly one without a built-in visitor base.

But for the ICA, the city's offer -- a free site! -- was hard to resist. Once the Pritzkers did their building, the ICA would be part of a thriving, new Boston neighborhood. The museum applied and, in November 1999, was selected.

The doubters did more than whisper.

The South Boston Design Advisory Committee, which included future US Representative Stephen F. Lynch, wrote to the Boston Redevelopment Authority, expressing "serious concerns over the viability of ICA's ability to be able to develop this site."

That didn't surprise Medvedow. A year earlier, at one of her own board meetings, she had heard similar doubts. Kenneth L. Freed, a local collector and ICA trustee, noted that the museum had already been advised that any new facility should be built near other attractions.

"I raised my hand and said, 'Isn't this a stand-alone site where there's nothing going on? Freed remembered telling Medvedow.

"She said, 'It's free.' I said, 'You get what you pay for.' "

Asking big
Barbara Lee knew she was on the hook. The ICA trustee, whose 1996 divorce from buyout king Thomas Lee left her with millions, had always been a museum booster, even before Medvedow's arrival.

As a trustee at the Gardner, Lee had worked with Medevow in the '90s, helping develop that museum's small contemporary art program. They were close enough that Lee had recused herself from the ICA director search in 1997. She didn't want others to think the fix was in.

As a philanthropist, Lee doesn't just hand over money. She has a philosophy. Get involved, see what's needed, and then step up. That's how it worked with the Gardner and the other institutions she had given to in the 1990s.

"I had gotten comfortable with giving a gift of a million dollars," Lee said.

Medvedow, though, made it clear that wouldn't be enough. She needed to change perceptions, to recast the ICA as a player. Early in 2000, the director cut to the point. She needed $5 million. "I said, 'Wow,' " remembered Lee. "I knew I wanted to make a leadership gift. I didn't expect it to be that number."

A few weeks later at a March ICA board meeting , Lee announced that she would give the money, no strings attached. The rest of the board, most of whom knew nothing about the request, began to applaud. Then they got out their checkbooks.

With the fund-raising rolling, Medvedow, eager to make a splash, turned the selection of an architect into a public drama. One Saturday in March 2001, the ICA held a design derby, a public presentation by four finalists in a packed Boston theater.

Two presentations stood out.

The surprise candidates, Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio , were New Yorkers known as much as artists as architects. They had never built a museum.

Using a laptop, Diller talked of their approach to light, drawing laughs from the audience with a slide showing the translucent walls separating the men's and women's bathrooms in one project, a feature she described as a "privacy leak." Diller showed photographs of the duo's remarkable Blur pavilion -- a fogged-over platform built over a lake for the Swiss National Expo in 2002. She wondered, out loud, whether the new ICA could feature a floating art barge.

Then Peter Zumthor took the stage.

He was the favorite, the Zen master from Switzerland whose resume offered a series of minimalist masterpieces, many of which the ICA's leaders had visited.

He wore a red scarf. He spoke of his love of cigars and red wine. He brought only a few slides, and scoffed at the idea his work could be understood from afar. Then Zumthor launched into a short anecdote that may have cost him the ICA job.

He talked about a commission awarded in Berlin. Unlike the projects the ICA leaders had seen, it was never built. The budget had delayed construction.

"This was eight . . . damned years ago and for eight years these people wanted me to make compromises and compromises," Zumthor said angrily, his face growing red.

In the audience, several ICA trustees were rattled.

"He was brilliant but iconoclastic," remembered Vin Cipolla, president of the ICA's board . "When he said that about the budget of the Berlin project, that made us gasp."

Reveal and conceal
Diller, Scofidio , and Charles Renfro, the firm's third partner, were thrilled to get the commission in April 2001. But along with its outlying location, Parcel J posed another problem.

"The water," said Diller. "It's almost too tempting to make that the focus of the building."

The answer, the architects decided, would be to control the view. Reveal and conceal: That became their concept. Light would be let through ceiling panels that were incandescent, but not clear. Inside , a viewer could still tell if it was a sunny day. From the outside, especially at night, the building would glow.

Its most distinctive feature would be an 80-foot cantilever, an overhang housing the ICA's new galleries. Though the architects had played with suspended spaces -- the Blur pavilion being the most stunning example -- the cantilever would be the most dramatic embodiment of the concept to date.

Most of the cantilever would be filled with the major gallery spaces. But right at the front, running the full width of the building, would be a long, shallow gallery that revealed the most unfettered view of the harbor. To add a concealing element, the architects wanted to use lenticular film. That blurred the view to either side of a visitor, offering a clear shot only when one stared straight ahead. The view in this Founders' Gallery would follow the visitors like a moving frame.

Medvedow embraced the design. So did board members and architecture critics studying the blueprints. City officials, though, had concerns about a building without a red brick to its name.

"They would tell me it was ugly," Kairos Shen, director of planning at the Boston Redevelopment Authority, remembers hearing from city leaders and local developers. "I told them, 'Don't judge this right now. Let it grow on you.' "

Compromises, compromises
So much had changed since 1999, when the ICA scored the Fan Pier plot. The city was now swirling with projects, not just the Big Dig but a lengthy list of museum expansions, from the MFA and Gardner to the Children's and Science museums.

On Fan Pier, the news was not so good. The Pritzkers delayed groundbreaking on their planned new neighborhood. Then they bowed out completely and put the land up for sale. All the condos and shops and restaurants slated to flank the ICA were suddenly on permanent hold.

The ICA still had to move forward. Now the new museum would be an island on the waterfront.

The groundbreaking, on a clear-blue fall day in 2004, raised the spirits of the trustees. It also locked them into a timetable. From here on out, every road bump -- arguments with the New England Development Corporation, the waterfront neighbor that owned the land holding Anthony's Pier 4 restaurant; the near-collapse of the project's construction company, Macomber Builders -- threatened to derail the museum's momentum.

The architects had their own battle. As the gleaming building began to rise on Fan Pier, Mayor Thomas M. Menino took a walk through. He stood in the Founders' Gallery. Then he was told about the lenticular film.

"Why are you going to blur the view?" Menino said. "When people come here, it's going to blow their minds."

The ICA's building committee began to waver, despite protests from the architects.

"We were very disappointed," said Diller. "If we had one conflict with Jill it was about that. She was totally supportive while we were planning it, but what happened with the mayor happened with a lot of people given a tour. You see that vast view, floor to ceiling, wall to wall, it's pretty breathtaking. To me, it's just too much of a good thing."

A 'hiccup,' or worse?
Invitations to the opening-week parties were at the printers.

Yes, there were delays in construction. By the time the ICA closed its Boylston Street building this summer, the new building project had fallen behind schedule. Macomber couldn't get enough workers to the site; quietly, the ICA had hired Skanska USA Building Inc. to take over.

But the plan was firm: to open in September, with music and dance performances, and a week of parties.

The invitations never went out. At the very last minute, the ICA had to cancel its long-awaited opening. The building wouldn't be done in time.

Medvedow tried to downplay the delay. She described it as "an insignificant and brief hiccup." In reality, the postponement created a mess. Performers booked into the ICA's new theater for the fall had to scramble for alternative space, or shift to next year.

One night in late September, ICA project manager Mike Waters came to City Hall to ask the Boston Conservation Commission for more time to comply with certain regulations.

Vivien Li, a commission member and executive director of the Boston Harbor Association, began hammering away at Waters. Why couldn't people get to the Harborwalk, the public path on the edge of the ICA's site? It's a construction zone, he said.

Where was the ICA's snow removal plan? Don't have it yet, Waters admitted.

Li raised her voice. "There's a reason we need these things," she said. "It frankly is insulting."

Waters got the extension, but Li's inquisition left him frazzled.

"When will the ICA open?" she asked him at one point.

"I can't give you a date," he told her.

It was another month before Waters finally knew. With the window of possibility narrowing between the holidays, the ICA announced in October that it would open to the public on Dec. 10, with several days of parties and members' events preceding the launch.

The timing was awkward, considering the likely chill on the waterfront and with Art Basel Miami Beach, the country's more important contemporary art fair, in full swing that week. What mattered most, though, the ICA's leaders agreed, is that the museum would, in fact, open in 2006.

On a recent afternoon, Medvedow sat in her sun-splashed corner office with Susan Courte manche, a former Gardner museum colleague who in 2000 did a study on whether the ICA could raise the money to build a new home.

They talked about plans for after the building opened, including programs and a new endowment campaign.

There was a knock on the door. Chief curator Nicholas Baume peeked in and asked if Medvedow had a moment.

The trio headed upstairs to one of the galleries, which by now were filling up with the paintings, sculptures, and photographs that would make up the inaugural show , "Super Vision." Baume led Medvedow over to Josiah McElheny's piece, a series of glass jars in a case that, through the use of mirrors, seemed to replicate itself infinitely.

Four trustees had purchased the McElheny in Medvedow's honor. Nancy Tieken, had been on the search committee that selected her. The other donors -- Bridgitt Evans , Anthony Terrana, and James Pallotta, and their respective spouses -- were brought into the ICA over the last four years, as the institution refashioned itself to play in the city's cultural big leagues.

"Oh my God," Medvedow said, putting her hands on her cheeks. "This is so amazing."

Behind her, Courtemanche and Baume chatted about the piece. Medvedow wasn't listening. Finally, Courtemanche noticed her staring.

"Are you crying?" she asked.

Geoff Edgers can be reached at gedgers@globe.com.For more on arts, visit boston.com/ae/theater_arts/exhibitionist.
Link (http://www.boston.com/ae/theater_arts/articles/2006/12/06/how_they_did_it/?page=1)

The architects had their own battle. As the gleaming building began to rise on Fan Pier, Mayor Thomas M. Menino took a walk through. He stood in the Founders' Gallery. Then he was told about the lenticular film.

"Why are you going to blur the view?" Menino said. "When people come here, it's going to blow their minds."

The ICA's building committee began to waver, despite protests from the architects.
&*$%^@ Menino! :roll:

[IMAngry]

The ICA needs to get going on building its permanent collection or I'm afraid people will lose interest in supporting it.

[Ron Newman]

Why do you think they will fail?

[LeTaureau]

They've survived this long, why do you think they'll fail? A lot of people in the Boston Area, and New England for that matter, don't even know that the ICA exists. This new museum should serve to make them more prominent. They need to create a buzz and to get word out that they're around, and I think this building will do just that. That in of itself would make them successful.

[IMAngry]

It doesn't have a permanent collection (yet), and its focus on contemporary art limits its audience, to begin with.

I was partially just being a negative nancy.

:O)

[vanshnookenraggen]

If this new building won't make people aware of the ICA, nothing will. If they get a decent collection I'm sure they will be set. I'm just waiting for some reporter to liken this building to the Guggenheim in New York (I say that with the underlying belief that Bostonians always compare their city to New York even when a comparison isn't justified or relateable, though the argument could be made here.)

[palindrome]

The new building has certainly caught my attention. I plan to make a visit sometime soon.

[Roxxma]

How permanent a collection can a contemporary art museum have? It reminds me of a sign that I saw last month on Berlin's Altes Museum that read in red: "ALL ART HAS BEEN CONTEMPORARY" (http://www.neonart.de/nannucci/am/am.html).

[jass]

Any plans for a Coutrhouse/ICA stop?


Incidently, the station is quite a showpeice, and the museum should add traffic to it.

[blade_bltz]

They've survived this long, why do you think they'll fail? A lot of people in the Boston Area, and New England for that matter, don't even know that the ICA exists. This new museum should serve to make them more prominent. They need to create a buzz and to get word out that they're around, and I think this building will do just that. That in of itself would make them successful.

Yeah - I totally agree. I mean, how many average joes actually know what ICA stands for at the Hynes stop.

[Beton Brut]

I'm just waiting for some reporter to liken this building to the Guggenheim in New York (I say that with the underlying belief that Bostonians always compare their city to New York even when a comparison isn't justified or relateable, though the argument could be made here.)

Though comparison to the (original? real?) Guggenheim is silly for a number of reasons, the ICA's form and nature (think building-as-observatory) is surely derived from Wright's work, along with that of his apprentice, John Lautner...

The both Fallingwater and the Sturgis House (in Brentwood, CA. - John Lautner's last assignment as a Taliesin apprentice) share a bold cantilevered form that turns the domestic space into a kind of "viewing platform"...Wright experimented with this technique during his Usonian period...

The Sturgis house is seen on the cover of this outstanding book by Alan Hess, with terrific photos by Alan Weintraub:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0847827364/ref=nosim/nordellbookst-20

(I don't think I need to post pix of Fallingwater...)

Throughout his career, John Lautner expanded and perfected Wright's ideas of framing or "capturing" the view, frequently abandoning Wright's geometric fussiness for free forms inspired by Oscar Niemeyer and Alvar Aalto.

The Chemosphere, Los Angeles, 1960

http://johnlautner.org/Photos/Malin3c.jpg

http://johnlautner.org/Photos/Malintwoc2.jpg

The Arango house, Acapulco, 1973

http://johnlautner.org/images/Arango1.jpg

http://www.artnet.de/artwork_images/1056/140722.jpg

Sheats-Goldstein House, Los Angeles, 1963

http://johnlautner.org/Photos/Sheats2.jpg

In considering Diller + Scoffido's ICA, there is a blending of concepts familiar to fans of the organic, classic modernism, and conceptual work of Rem Koolhaas & OMA (in particular, the ribbon-form that snakes its way through the building's elevation)...

The mechanical corral on the roof looks lousy, but I think the building rocks otherwise...

[kz1000ps]

I can't wait to go see this building Sunday. I just finished watching Greater Boston on WGBH where they had a segment on the new structure and all I can say is the more I see the more I'm impressed. Granted what I've seen was through video, but it genuinely looks to be a thought-provoking building, even if it won't win any beauty pageants.

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..!

[justin]

Another objection: earlier renderings suggested that the cross-bracing between the trusses was going to be visible through the translucent glass, but it seems to have been whited out.

justin

[justin]

The Globe has a whole interactive section on the ICA.

http://www.boston.com/ae/theater_arts/specials/ica/

I was surprised to find that the building isn't rectangular in plan at all. The diagonal of the lobby coming out of the opening in the grandstand is a nice touch.

justin

[Scott]

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..!

I'll be there. It is supposed to be sunny and 50 on Sunday so it should be a decent day.

[LeTaureau]

It doesn't have a permanent collection (yet), and its focus on contemporary art limits its audience, to begin with.

I was partially just being a negative nancy.

:O)

Actually, I believe that it does have a permanent collection, but a lot of the exhibits at the museum are installation pieces, so a permanent collection is less important for contemporary art

[PaulC]

link to permanent collection:
http://www.icaboston.org/exhibitions/permanent-collection/artists/


Does anyone know if they allowed for future expansions? I'm very disappointed to see that there are only two galleries.

[kz1000ps]

The two big galleries are each broken up into several smaller rooms by movable partitions, and it was stated in the NECN piece that not all of the smaller spaces were full. Jill Medvedow also commented something to the effect like how exciting it was to imagine what pieces would eventually fill up those empty rooms, so future expansion shouldn't be a problem for a while to come.

[justin]

'Permanent collection of the Institute of Contemporary Art'...

Am I the only one to smell an oxymoron?

justin

[JS38]

The New York Times architecture review of the ICA is here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/08/arts/design/08ica.html?hp&ex=1165554000&en=b00de32d923c38a5&ei=5094&partner=homepage

[statler]

'Permanent collection of the Institute of Contemporary Art'...

Am I the only one to smell an oxymoron?

justin

I'm with you on that one.

Do other modern art museums have permanent collections?

[Ron Newman]

Uh, yeah, the one in NYC has a huge collection.

[xec]

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.

[justin]

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

[xec]

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:

[briv]

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..!

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.

[statler]

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.
Link (http://www.weeklydig.com/arts/articles/the_new_ica)

[ablarc]

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.
Worth noting.

[kz1000ps]

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.

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?

[Scott]

South Lobby 11ish. If you see a guy with a blue ICA pullout from the Globe, that will probably be me.

[kz1000ps]

OK. I'm tall and skinny and will be wearing a black North Face jacket.

[Ron Newman]

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.)

[statler]

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

[aws129]

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.

[Scott]

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.

[kz1000ps]

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.

[IMAngry]

At night, lit up, it looks most like a Walmart, to me.

[Ron Newman]

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.

[TheBostonian]

I'm gonna get a closer look tomorrow morning and then go inside soon on a free Target Thursday.

[Ron Newman]

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.

[ablarc]

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.

Wisdom.
.

[bosdevelopment]

It's not that i'm not accepting of new architecture, or that I only prefer a light pink brick facade, but the ICA is ugly objectively and subjectively.

[kz1000ps]

I agree with you, but having experienced the interior, I like the building. Until architects learn there are other options than blank metal panels or precast brick slabs, this will be as good as it gets.

[ablarc]

I agree with you, but having experienced the interior, I like the building. Until architects learn there are other options than blank metal panels or precast brick slabs, this will be as good as it gets.
You don't have to like art.

I'm not sure I especially like this building, but at least it's the first example of the art of architecture built in Boston in a while; the other two recent instances are both across the river at MIT. Not sure I like those much either, but at least they're art too. So they all deserve the respect and attention Campbell gives this one. And you don't have to like it any more than you like, say, e.e. cummings.

I also didn't much like A Clockwork Orange, but it's also art. Most folks on this forum don't like City Hall, which is also art.

The French, who have a knack for precise terms would classify recent Boston eye candy as art decoratif. An example is 111 Huntington.

[kz1000ps]

Architectural college buys ICA's old building

By David Abel, Globe Staff | January 4, 2007

The Boston Architectural College announced yesterday that it has acquired the former home of the Institute of Contemporary Art.

The renovated, 25,423-square-foot building, at 955 Boylston St., is adjacent to the college's main campus on Newbury Street, officials said.

The college will help pay for the building through a $12.4 million tax-exempt bond issued by MassDevelopment, the state's finance and development authority. The sale price was not disclosed.

The college will start planning how to use the space this spring, officials said. The school's president, Ted Landsmark, said the community will be included.

"This is a significant permanent addition to our campus," Landsmark said.

"As we envision how environmental and human design will be addressed in the 21st century," he added, "955 Boylston Street will enable us to better serve our students in architecture, interior design, landscape and design studies, and the public."

The building was designed in 1886 in Richardson Romanesque Revival style, as the first combined fire and police station in Boston, college officials said. The police station was later converted into art galleries before it became home to the Institute of Contemporary Art, which recently moved to the waterfront. The college has more than 1,000 students.
? Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company.

[Ron Newman]

Good. They were the most logical buyer.

[czsz]

I checked out the new ICA last weekend and was pleasantly surprised...though I felt it would be (and should be) about twice as large. Innovative architecture, in Boston! And not a risible target like Holl's sponge or the Stata Center, either.

It was also a pleasant surprise to go somewhere in this city and see something of a contemporary art crowd. Boston doesn't really have an artist/hipster neighborhood but the museum seemed to bring out many people who would live in one. To put it another way, it felt somewhat like New York or London inside, which was refreshing for a city often dressed in the homogenous, conservative, provincial hues of khakhi and brick.

[Roxxma]

Boston doesn't really have an artist/hipster neighborhood but the museum seemed to bring out many people who would live in one. Ummmmmm, Have you ever been to Jamaica Plain, or most of Cambridge and Somerville? There are also small enclaves in the South End, South Boston (not far from the ICA), the Fenway and Roxbury...

[Ron Newman]

Even if you hate the name, I'd suggest a visit to "SoWa" (South of Washington, in the South End). That's an artist/hipster district if there ever was one.

[blade_bltz]

Everyone I know in the Boston art scene found the art at the ICA humdrum and certainly not "contemporary."

[czsz]

Neither Somerville nor Jamaica Plain really have the critical density of someplace like the Lower East Side or East Village, and Cambridge is only as dense in fairly conservative neighborhoods like Harvard Square. I guess one could include Central Square, but it honestly feels more like Berkeley to me than New York, and the presence of Gap and Starbucks isn't helping its case. Davis Square might be a candidate, if it weren't so, well, sleepy. The rest of Somerville has more of a working-class vibe. Jamaica Plain feels more like an upper middle class family neighborhood (or a lower middle class Hispanic one, depending on what part of Centre Street one is on). The South End enclaves feel more like parts of Manhattan's Chelsea with gallery row strips.

The point is, if I took anyone familiar with the Mission District in San Francisco or Magazine Street in New Orleans, the inner neighborhoods of East Berlin or the aforementioned neighborhoods in New York to Cambridge, Somerville, or Jamaica Plain and told them they were comparable, they would roll their eyes. There's something about worn brick or stone and the abundance of artistic graffiti, a certain classic bohemian romance, that Boston isn't really compatible with. The only neighborhoods in which this would work, perhaps, have already been gentrified to exhaustion, and the rest of the city, by which I mean the oceans of lumpy three-deckers and one-story commercial strips, seem incapable of expressing the aesthetic in any convincing way.

EDIT: I might make an exception for Allston...I think it has the potential to be this sort of place...perhaps if it were home to more MassArt and Berklee people than BC/BU students.

[PaulC]

Everyone I know in the Boston art scene found the art at the ICA humdrum and certainly not "contemporary."

I thought you might find this article in Sunday's Boston Globe interesting. It echos your opinion:

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/living/articles/2007/01/14/from_charred_wood_to_tropical_fantasies/

[JS38]

From a review by Sarah Goldhagen in the New Republic on the exhibition comparing fashion design and contemporary architecture called "Skin+Bones" is this passage:

"Diller Scofidio + Renfro's recently opened Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston looks fantastic from the Boston harbor and from the computer-generated stills of it exhibited in "Skin + Bones." Given how conservative the architectural community is in Boston, it is an important accomplishment. Yet the actual building's entry sequence, the non-existent relationship of its structural theatrics to the shape of its interior spaces, its detailing, its spatial processions, and even its top-lit galleries are simply, grievously, awful."

For those of you who have been to the ICA (I have not yet) what do you think about this view?

[bosdevelopment]

This is what happened when I went to the ICA:

http://www.extremefunnyhumor.com/pics/humpandpuke.gif

[PerfectHandle]

For those of you who have been to the ICA (I have not yet) what do you think about this view?

That's harsh, but I tend to agree. I think it's a great building symbolically, but it fails in many important ways. I found myself getting very frustrated when I went.

[kmp1284]

This is what happened when I went to the ICA:

http://www.extremefunnyhumor.com/pics/humpandpuke.gif

wow, yeah, that's a thoughtful and provoking reaction indeed, perhaps for a brain-dead seventeen year old

[bosdevelopment]

This is what happened when I went to the ICA:

http://www.extremefunnyhumor.com/pics/humpandpuke.gif

wow, yeah, that's a thoughtful and provoking reaction indeed, perhaps for a brain-dead seventeen year old

Relax bro! Isn't that your pooch?

[justin]

This is what happened when I went to the ICA:

http://www.extremefunnyhumor.com/pics/humpandpuke.gif

^ so which one is you?

[bosdevelopment]

those were my dogs.

[callahan]

Boston doesn't really have an artist/hipster neighborhood Thank God! I'm so sick of hipsters! The only thing worse than hipsters are the hipster ghettos.

I live between New York and Boston now. I can't believe how "groovy" New York has become. Unfortunately, it's only on the outside. New York is as gentrified as any other big city and three times as expensive. There's not a neighborhood in that city where a struggling artist can live. (unless you consider Philly a neighborhood of New York) At least Boston has a few neighborhoods left where you can find a decent two bedroom apartment for less than $1500.00 a month. Jamaica Plain and most of Dorchester are affordable, interesting neighborhoods where "hipsters" and old Boston natives and different cultures mix together. Oh, and let's not forget Somerville. In fact, Somerville is becoming dangerously close to anything as "hipster" as there is in NYC.

You can't even find those neighborhoods in most of Brooklyn anymore.

Rich hipsters. You can keep 'em in NYC and San Francisco.

[vanshnookenraggen]

Rich Hipsters = YUPies 2.0

What about Allston? It was pretty hipster infested when I still lived in Boston. Not as bad as Williamsburg, but then I don't know any place that bad.

[JS38]

From this Sunday's Ideas section:

Q&A with Elizabeth Diller

By Harvey Blume | February 18, 2007

Elizabeth Diller, of the architecture firm Diller, Scofidio + Renfro, is known in Boston for her role in designing the new home of the Institute of Contemporary Art on Boston Harbor. But in keeping with Diller's refusal to sharply divide art from architecture, the building does more than admirably house and showcase contemporary art; it also exemplifies it.

When I met with Diller last week in her office in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood, she said that residents of Boston -- "a traditional city, a brick city" -- struck her from the first as "hungry for a piece of contemporary architecture." With its large, cantilevered gallery space, the new ICA delivers handsomely on that score. But Diller wanted to give the building another dimension, encouraging museum-goers "to look a little bit at looking itself."

The ICA accomplishes that with varied, carefully modulated views of Boston Harbor, which make it difficult not to ask where the art ends and the world -- in this case a water world -- begins. And that is exactly the sort of question many artists in the last century have specialized in putting forward.

Diller's blurring of distinctions between art and architecture has occasioned resentment from architects. "Professional jealousy" came to the fore, she told me, when she and her husband Ricardo Scofidio won MacArthur "genius" grants in 1999, the first architects to do so. Colleagues muttered about the couple getting that kind of recognition: Hadn't Diller and Scofidio mostly been involved with installation art, dance pieces, theater, and film, all of which may have explored issues of space and human interaction but couldn't be considered architecture per se?

That question, however, if it was ever plausible, is now moot. The ICA is widely praised, and Elizabeth Diller and company have taken on a number of high profile projects in New York City, including the redesign of Lincoln Center, which is underway, and the transformation of the High Line -- an abandoned, elevated railroad in Chelsea -- into a park.

IDEAS: What's the difference between working in New York and working in Boston?

DILLER: Some of the work we're doing in New York City right now -- Lincoln Center, the High Line -- has historical significance particular to New York. In Boston we were privileged to be on the edge, in a development not yet built. That gave us enormous freedom.

IDEAS: Does being involved in high profile architecture mean you'll be doing less of the kind of art you're known for?

DILLER: Not at all. We have a whole division here for money-losing projects, and someone in charge of it.

We've recently collaborated on a theater piece called "Who's Your Dada?" and finished work with a French filmmaker. It's what we need to do to survive. Our practice is a research practice. Occasionally we get a chance to realize our researches in real life, in public space.

IDEAS: But you have run into some severe criticism, haven't you, from both the art world and architects.

DILLER: There is a kind of disciplinary border control at work here. There are those who think that people like us ought to pick one discipline, architecture or art. When we had a show at the Whitney Museum ["Scanning: The Aberrant Architectures of Diller & Scofidio," 2003] some critics were infuriated that architects like us were traveling in the art world. They couldn't imagine us as architects who were interested in space, and in showing how art and architecture can overlap.

IDEAS: But don't you acknowledge a difference between having a show at the Whitney Museum, say, and building the ICA or redesigning Lincoln Center?

DILLER: Of course it's different. Each project, each site has different limitations and a different history. We start every project by exploring the history. For example, we started Lincoln Center by looking at when it was built. What we do will be a bit of a commentary on its history.

IDEAS: It was built under Robert Moses, right?

DILLER: Right, in the late 1950s, early 1960s. Lincoln Center demolished block after block to be built, displacing thousands of families and businesses. It was regarded as almost an enemy of the people, an Acropolian structure elevating the arts and freezing the public out.

IDEAS: New Yorkers don't see it that way now.

DILLER: But that is its history. Lincoln Center pushed the public out, censoring out the public that lived nearby, and inviting only a certain clientele. It has generated all this development around it since, so now you see fancy towers and private condos in that area.

IDEAS: All very elite.

DILLER: Exactly. Lincoln Center produced an expansion of its elitism in the development around it.

But now when you look at Lincoln Center it actually seems a lower scale thing, a sanctuary in the middle of all these huge condos. Our aim is to help democratize it, letting the general public in, and sending a message to the city to that effect.

IDEAS: How will you do it?

DILLER: By eroding its edges. It's built almost like a fortress with a solid base all the way around it. Most of the periphery is about service, either garage entries or loading docks. We're turning it inside out, assisting an historic reversal.

IDEAS: What do you intend to do with the High Line?

DILLER: In a sense, our role as architects is to protect it from architecture.

In the decades since the High Line was used as an industrial railroad, all these ecosystems have grown up on it, evolving from air blown seed, or seeds that had come in on the wheels of trains. Rudolph Giuliani wanted to demolish the High Line. But now that people know it's going to be saved, developers are coming like a pack of wolves. We want to preserve some of the High Line's rawness.

IDEAS: When you started out, people like you and Ricardo Scofidio, with art world backgrounds, didn't actually get to build buildings, did you?

DILLER: Very true. When we began in the early '80s, architects couldn't build because there was a recession. Some interesting architectural thinkers chose to express themselves on paper, either in print or on gallery walls. That was considered paper architecture.

We were different in that we really wanted to realize our work in a public realm, even if it had short duration. Sometimes we stole or borrowed sites. Sometimes we were invited to do work in galleries.

IDEAS: What's changed so that you get backing to actually build?

DILLER: In New York City, there is a really unusual administration -- a pro-active mayor who thinks big, and a progressive set of minds ushering in a lot of interesting projects. As luck would have it, we are the beneficiaries.

IDEAS: And in Boston? How did you get a major new museum off the ground?

DILLER: When Jill Medvedow became director in 1998, the ICA was very close to closing its doors, and not necessarily for lack of good shows. But Jill's an activist by nature. She really knew how to step in, expand the board, and raise money. Boston does not have a huge contemporary art patronage, though there's no shortage of patrons for the ballet or the Museum of Fine Arts. But Jill was able to get enthusiastic younger members on the board who got their friends involved. She was charming and passionate, and able to convince a lot of people.

IDEAS: So leadership counts. Will you be doing more work in Boston?

DILLER: We made a lot of friends in Boston, and hope more work will evolve. And we're forever connected to the ICA at the hip.

Harvey Blume is a writer based in Cambridge. His interviews appear regularly in Ideas. E-mail hblume@world.std.com.

? Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company.

[lexicon506]

Sounds like the ICA is doing well....from today's New York Times:


March 28, 2007
Boston
Big Waves Sighted on the Waterfront
By MILES UNGER

THROUGHOUT its history, Boston?s reputation for intellectual and political progressiveness has been matched by its reputation for cultural stodginess. Natives of the Athens of America have always preferred to have their buildings covered in ivy and their art crusted over with a fine patina. Perhaps the prototypical cultured Bostonian was Bernard Berenson, who demanded that painters be centuries in the grave before he trained his educated eye on their works.

All that changed in December when the Institute of Contemporary Art opened its splashy new home on the Boston waterfront. Despite concerns about the limited money available for building a permanent collection ? an effort that began only six years ago ? and questions as to whether the quality of the exhibitions will match the quality of the architecture, the museum?s arrival has been greeted with wide enthusiasm, even relief, by a community that has seen its share of frustrations.

The building, designed by the experimental firm of Diller Scofidio + Renfro, not only embodies a renewed commitment to the exhibition of contemporary art in Boston, but does so in a form that is unapologetically forward-looking. With its steel-and-glass facade, light-filled galleries occupying a cantilevered top floor that reaches out aggressively to the harbor, the museum is shaking off the dust of history.

The force behind this turnaround is Jill Medvedow, who became the museum?s director in 1998, taking over a 60-year-old institution that was sliding gently into oblivion. By that year, attendance at the museum, then housed in a Romanesque Revival former police station in Back Bay, had declined to a paltry 15,000, and the dark, cramped galleries placed a heavy burden on curators who struggled to make innovative work come alive.

?I came in to transform the institution,? said Ms. Medvedow, who previously ran the small contemporary art program at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. ?The I.C.A. had a tremendous history of prescience and bravery, but it needed more space, a different kind of space.?

In 1999, plans were announced for the redevelopment of Fan Pier, a spectacular but neglected stretch of waterfront with a three-quarter-acre parcel set aside for civic use. Ms. Medvedow leaped at the opportunity to build a new home for contemporary art there.

But the museum?s inadequacy, which made the move imperative, also made it difficult to persuade donors during an effort to raise $62 million. Philanthropists happy to give to institutions like the Museum of Fine Arts or the Boston Symphony were leery of opening their checkbooks for one that had yet to prove its appeal to a Boston audience.

Somehow, Ms. Medvedow convinced both the civic authorities and donors that an organization with a devoted but tiny following ? one, moreover, ?that had never had a significant capital campaign? ? was ready for the big time. ?We were able to paint a portrait of an institution that would be transformative,? she said. But, she added, ?I think until we broke ground there was more skepticism than belief.?

Envisioning a vital center for contemporary art in Boston required a leap of faith. Nicholas Baume, the museum?s Australian-born chief curator, said: ?For some reason, while comparable American cities had evolved major museums of contemporary art, Boston hadn?t done that. Was it because, as some people said, the people of Boston aren?t interested in contemporary art? That Boston is more about history and not about looking forward?? In the end, Mr. Baume fell back on instinct. In a city as educated and cultured as this one, he insisted, there had to be a huge untapped demand for the vanguard shows he was determined to put on.

Doubts about the viability of the project were widely shared, even among those involved in contemporary arts. ?I think as all the plans were developed and they were raising the money and moving into the new building, a lot of people probably were sort of holding their breath hoping it would work,? said Wendy Baring-Gould, director of the Boston Center for the Arts, which features performing and visual arts.

But like many others, Ms. Baring-Gould has become a convert. She told of a Saturday visit in January when she and more than 300 others waited in line to get into the building ? a scene unthinkable at the old museum.

Yet challenges remain, including answering questions of what it means to be a cultural player in Boston. One complaint often voiced about the old museum was that it seemed disengaged from the local art community.

?I hope they exhibit in a broader way than they have up to now,? said Nina Nielsen, owner of the Nielsen Gallery, a pillar of the commercial art scene here. Building bridges to local artists and galleries, she said, ?doesn?t mean that you?re just provincial; it means you?re in touch with the community.?

Ms. Medvedow has tried to allay concerns that the museum will be just another stop on the international art circuit, with shallow roots in its home turf. ?In addition to bringing forward works from around the world,? she said, ?it?s important to bring forward work from our part of the world and to make sure that our curators are aware of and inside of the local art community, going to the galleries, the openings and to the studios, sharing with curators nationally what?s going on in Boston.?

The inaugural shows in the new building tried to balance the local with the international. While ?Super Vision,? which continues until April 29, has familiar names (Mona Hatoum, Anish Kapoor, Andreas Gursky, Jeff Koons, etc.), four regional artists were exhibited as finalists for the biennial James and Audrey Foster Prize. Beginning today, ?Bourgeois in Boston? takes another approach by viewing the work of the French-born sculptor Louise Bourgeois through the eyes of local collectors and collections.

Other basic questions, about the scope and quality of the permanent collection, remain. After a long history of staging only temporary exhibitions, the museum is getting a late start, with limited money, in building its collection. Further, the museum?s decision to buy works only from artists included in recent exhibitions, intended to husband scarce resources, will limit its ability to provide historical context for new art, which Mr. Baume says is an essential part of the museum?s mission.

Still, the new museum has produced an almost giddy mood in art circles. Even on weekdays the galleries are bustling, and projected attendance is 233,000 its first year.

Ms. Medvedow seems awed by the achievements. ?I?m both terrified and thrilled,? she said. With the whir of the opening behind her, she took stock of her first month in the new building. ?If I have any regrets, it is that the response has been so overwhelming that we will probably outgrow our space sooner than we had anticipated,? she said. ?It?s a nice problem to have.?

The optimism here is based not only on the new museum but also on other projects that are expected to help turn Boston into a hub for new art. One is an ambitious expansion at the Museum of Fine Arts that, among other things, will triple the space devoted to contemporary art. Harvard, too, has stepped up its commitment, hiring Helen Molesworth as the first full curator of contemporary art and announcing plans for a center on modern and contemporary art in Allston.

Harry Cooper, curator of modern art at Harvard?s Fogg Art Museum, summed up the mood: ?People feel we?re on the brink of a renaissance. Or maybe not a renaissance, because that implies a rebirth. But maybe on the brink of the birth of contemporary art in Boston.?

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

[IMAngry]

I'm withholding judgment on the ICA until I get to see it. So far, it seems that people are more interested in the building than the art.

[Lrfox]

IMAngry- my thoughts exactly. I had no interest in the ICA whatsoever until i saw plans for the new building. The only reason i even want to see it is to see the building itself. Soon enough, its novelty will wear off, and it will become just as obscure (if not more so due to it's less accessible location now) as it was in the Back Bay.

[singbat]

IMAngry- my thoughts exactly. I had no interest in the ICA whatsoever until i saw plans for the new building. The only reason i even want to see it is to see the building itself. Soon enough, its novelty will wear off, and it will become just as obscure (if not more so due to it's less accessible location now) as it was in the Back Bay.

fwiw, the old ICA was beautiful inside and out. much more welcoming. inside there was a sense of purposeful chaos (from what i remember). and that little corner of the world between the Boston Film-Video Foundation, ICA, Berklee, the Conservatory, Hort Hall, and Symphony, as well as NEU, MassArt and the Museum School seemed like a kind of art district to me.

Emerson's gone a bit further away. ICA's gone east. BFVF finally died. who knows whats at Hort now. would have been nice to grow the eclectic side of the area, rather then having it become just a music ghetto and a bunch of BU students...

and, mho, the new building is no great thing. turns its back on the street, among other things. terrible aesthetics.

[Lrfox]

Thanks for the input. Reading your post makes me wish i visited that area more. It also makes it seem like the ICA was better off before. Maybe i'm just tempted to go see the new building because of all the fanfare surrounding it.

[ablarc]

and, mho, the new building is no great thing. turns its back on the street, among other things. terrible aesthetics.
Here's someone who agrees with you, singbat:

http://www.metropolismag.com/webimages/2681/ICAnoglam.jpg.http://www.metropolismag.com/webimages/2681/ICA-Boston-DSR-1280.jpg
The less glamorous face the building shows to its neighbors

Die Another Day

The cycle of codependence between critics and stars does a disservice to both public and profession alike.

Metropolis Magazine
May 18, 2007

http://www.metropolismag.com/webimages/2681/bondcouple.jpg
Our Bond couple - Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio - stands before the ICA in Boston

By Philip Nobel



Here we go again.

A celebrated firm, in a cloud of blinding stardust, completes a long anticipated project. In early photos it looks as if it has fallen short of the renderings, published years ago to great acclaim.

The firm has been floating on the power of words and images for longer than anyone cares to remember and it hasn?t built much, so it should be no surprise that the building?s not perfect.

Architecture is hard?they?ll do better next time. Right?



But as the ribbon is cut, everyone agrees it?s a success, possibly a triumph. Paradigms have been rocked, stasis shaken.

For the fortunate city a new day is proclaimed; for its citizens, the building is a gift.



At some point I make my way to see the new paragon, and it?s a mess, even an embarrassment.

Thoughts turn to naked emperors and their court. Again.

What?s going on here? The short answer is: ?Who cares??

Architects with skills unworthy of their hype have been stealing the limelight for so long, and with so little complaint from the press, that we can?t possibly get exercised over another glowing critical response to a so-so building.



The long answer to the question is ?business as usual.? and that business is perpetuation of a destructive cycle of codependence between the critical establishment and the architects we?ve all come to think of as stars.

To dispatch with the obvious, the ICA?s new home is disappointing.

It has been held up as an icon for the city?first by the clients and the architects, now by the critics?and is intended to anchor with culture a new quarter to be constructed on Boston?s long empty Fan Pier.

Where that new zone will eventually be there is a field of parking lots and fences; but even if the city is patched, the direction of approach will remain.

The museum sits on the edge of the water, and reaches toward it with a deep cantilever, but to the land it shows only its back.

It?s clear from the first glance at that poorly detailed, almost accidental rear facade that the experience of tourists on tour boats and the views of residents of gentrifying East Boston on the opposite shore have been privileged over those of future neighbors and those actually entering the thing.

But the grand gesture to the sea looks great in pictures, and that serves architects and critics (and their photo editors) alike.

A big attention-grabbing move is absolutely necessary in an age when, to succeed in mass-market terms, buildings must be reducible to arresting images that can be sold to clients and resold to the consumers of media. That way stardom lies.

But the big move chosen by DS+R (from a series of varied but equally strident early studies) results only in spatial confusion. The cantilever covers a much lauded waterfront plaza with bleacher seating?a stop on a harborside promenade that Elizabeth Diller once referred to as Boston?s only viable civic space?shading it miserably.

The same photo-ready overhang necessitates the placement of the galleries (which take no chances in cleaving to the white-walled and black-boxed norm) way up high. DS+R then solved that problem of its own making with the same big-elevator-and-narrow-stair combination that works so badly at the Whitney.

Circulation is correspondingly poor; details are sloppy throughout.

One room, the Media Center, is cool and earns its raves: it steps down from the trouble-making cantilever to a truly inspired and well-controlled view of the water. If there were equal and consistent experiential payoffs throughout, I?d be the first to say, To hell with the mundane?endure the circulatory games, ignore the material realm, and transcend.

?The firm has been telegraphing for years, in renderings of un-built and forthcoming work, that its finished buildings would take their cues from things we?ve already seen.

The image of a folding plane that becomes floor, wall, and ceiling?only an image, because when built it is always a fake?has been a staple of ?edgy? work for more than a decade.

Neil Denari, who may have been the first to popularize the motif, called his version a ?worldsheet,? but the same empty form has been used by Lindy Roy in a house in the Hamptons and, most famously, by Rem Koolhaas in his Educatorium, in Utrecht.

If spades were called spades, the ICA would be a startlingly ham-fisted homage to OMA?one, moreover, nearly bare of the transient joys that Rem regularly works into his buildings.

It?s all in plain sight, standing alone beside Boston Harbor.



But consider the pressures to write a positive review. Most American architecture critics have built their careers in part by reflexively championing the new. It?s likely they?ve been promoting just this sort of thing for years against a perception of local inertia. When it?s made real, or close enough: two thumbs up.

Critics being people too, there may also be a wish to be on the winning team. Certainly there?s more power in constructing fame than in questioning it.

Or is it that such critics think that star-crafted buildings, even if derivative and poorly realized, are inherently better than the alternative?

Do they fear that by challenging these architects they might discourage innovation?

Do they imagine that promoting innovation?even just the look of innovation?is such a pure good that the defense of all other values must be suspended?

The pattern is real, and its effects are clear. Bad buildings by big names get a regular pass.

Though no connection between high-glamour architects and high-quality buildings is ever demonstrated, the client learns that it pays to gamble on the stars.

Mediocrity goes unchecked. The public gets shafted. The cycle repeats. Architecture lives to die another day.


* * *

The article above appears in http://www.metropolismag.com/cda/story.php?artid=2681. A bit long and wordy to post entire on this forum, I?ve abridged and reformatted it for easier reading. My apologies to the author.

.

[ablarc]

I had no interest in the ICA whatsoever until i saw plans for the new building. The only reason i even want to see it is to see the building itself. Soon enough, its novelty will wear off, and it will become just as obscure (if not more so due to it's less accessible location now) as it was in the Back Bay.
Better curating and exhibits would help. This place's offerings are often dull.

[Merper]

... aside from the landside of this building completely sucking (all there is on that side is a steel service door) the exterior finishing on that side is also already peeling.

[ablarc]

jasonik just posted some pics here: http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?p=166157#post166157

[Scott]

At some point I make my way to see the new paragon, and it's a mess, even an embarrassment.

Wow! Two big thumbs down from Stank Lloyd Wrong.

Not a single word about art? Of course it hardly matters if some critic had a lousy day at the museum and employs his thesaurus to eloquently express his displeasure in some snotty magazine. A museum is judged by the people of the city who adopt it and support it... or not.

[ablarc]

^ It's never been a very good museum, Scott.

[briv]

I noticed this rather severe weathering on the ICA's facade recently. This is clearly a sign of water damage. What's the deal? Not even a year old and showing signs of deterioration?

Note the rust streak. This is an indication of water penetrating the facade. Not good. Especially for a brand new building.

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1374/1394371897_8033ce6025_o.jpg

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1368/1394371903_0b13c975fd_o.jpg

Also, has anyone noticed these cornerstones laid out beside the jersey barriers lining the ICA's parking lot? They appear to read "New England Bld'g...Erected 1889".

What building did they belong to and why are they there? Are these from their former home on Boylston Street? Anyone know?

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1191/1394371889_4a3c4761a0_o.jpg

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1070/1394371891_838c91c606_o.jpg

[kz1000ps]

I first spotted that weathered patch from Northern Boulevard about a week ago, and it's plainly obvious from that distance.

[vanshnookenraggen]

This is typical. My father works for an engineering firm and almost all they do is fix water problems, all in new construction too.

[kz1000ps]

Another shot of the compromised facade.

http://img230.imageshack.us/img230/6777/img0530nw0.jpg

[vanshnookenraggen]

Sweet Jesus that is some shotty workmanship.

[statler]

A follow-up to the Die Another Day (http://www.metropolismag.com/cda/story.php?artid=2681) column ablarc had posted:

In My Backyard
Our columnist?s first built work casts a slightly different light on criticism.
By Philip Nobel
Posted July 25, 2007
http://www.metropolismag.com/webimages/2889/nobel1_t346.jpg
I?m feeling a little exposed. And not only because so many people have been chattering (pro and con) about my May column on starchitects and critical complicity. There?s more on that below. But first my crisis: exactly 12 years after graduating from architecture school, I?ve finally built something?a real structure, inhabitable, subject to sun and rain, wrestling every minute with wind, rot, and gravity. Oh, how I was kept up at night thinking about overturning and shear! The site was tricky (the preexisting concrete pad not being perfectly flat), and the program was devilishly complex.

I wanted to make a clubhouse for my sons to play their Star Wars games out of earshot and a secluded spot for my girlfriend?a Quaker, no less?to sit and watch our garden grow. To resolve that in-herent conflict, I thought briefly about introducing yet more program?perhaps a bus station as I?d seen a young provocateur do far too recently in a housing studio at Yale?but then it occurred to me that this whole cross-programming thing is so, like, 15 years ago, and anyway I wasn?t sure how to get the B61 into my backyard without discomfiting the neighbors. So I built this kinda tower, about ten feet tall, with an enclosed hideout for the spry up top and a sorta love seat (just in case I was invited) facing out toward the weeds at the base.

It is a triumph, of course. Paradigms have been rocked, stasis shaken, etc., etc.

Then my friends started coming over, beginning with Thomas de Monchaux, a brilliant architecture critic, who said he was impressed by my comfort with angles other than 90 degrees (to my eyes it is perfectly square, except where I really could have used a second pair of hands to help hold things straight). Next came a smart architect; he saw it and was appalled. Somehow not providing access to the tippy top, a choice made to reduce the likelihood of emergency room visits (which is to say in response to my clients? needs), negated the very idea of ?tower? and caused my friend to shake his head with grave and not entirely mock concern. I had planned a plastic bubble skylight for the roof, sourced it on the Web, and even bought a keyhole saw to install it, which would have provided that climax through visual access. But my clients objected. ?We want it dark up there,? the little philistines whined.

Soon a crowd came by for a cookout. Everyone kept referring to my unique architectural response to space and place as a ?lifeguard stand? (has nothing else ever been made out of white-painted 4?4s?), and some, several beers in, went so far as to swing on the delicate yet boldly cantilevered trellis, a gracious statement about infinity and the pitfalls of building with wet wood that in no way can be mistaken for monkey bars (except for the fact that I used grip-width dowels and spaced them just the right distance apart). Keen-eyed Karrie Jacobs, my beloved column colleague, came, observed, and had no comment.

Damn critics! Can?t anyone read the architecture? Or did these doubters just momentarily forget the most important rule of architecture criticism in a free society? People are welcome to do whatever dumb-ass thing they want on their own property, but as soon as a building fronts on a street, as soon as it invites strangers in, as soon as it affects the shape of a city?which is, after all, something we all still share?the work in question must rise to a certain level of quality, the architects should conduct themselves with a certain level of respect and dignity (or at least keep the selfish myth-building mendacity to a minimum), and critics need to weigh the success of the new thing in this light, out of a sense of responsibility to the state of the art and an eye on the public trust.

Which brings us back to that column from two months ago in which I expressed some concern, perhaps even annoyance, at the ongoing and, I believe, irresponsible fluffing of star architects by so many architecture critics. As the latest example of this widespread and persistent phenomenon, I looked at Diller Scofidio + Renfro?s new building for the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), in Boston, which was greeted with all kinds of praise despite being, I and a few others have argued, not quite the thing. There?s a little delay here (ah, for the immediacy of a blog), but I?d like to respond to some of the response to that column.

First, re: general charges of cruelty, I wasn?t being sarcastic when I wrote of DS+R, ?Architec?ture is hard?they?ll do better next time. Right?? That was meant to be earnest sympathy, as well as a suggestion of a more fitting tone than fanfare with which to appraise the work of architects who are in effect still learning how to build. Who is served by pretending an honest spring-training single is a pennant-winning home run?

Many people have also suggested, in private communications and on the busy comments thread at Metropolismag.com, that it was unfair to pick on the ICA alone. Why, more than a few have asked, did I not also mention ?Danny in Denver,? ?Danny in Toronto,? or ?Zaha in Cincinnati?? Only because, I?m ashamed to say, I haven?t visited those buildings. But I have written about overhyped projects comparable to the ICA many times here, arguing, for instance, that Steven Holl?s dorm at MIT, Norman Foster?s Hearst Tower, Frank Gehry?s IAC headquarters, and?the granddaddy of them all?Peter Eisenman?s Wexner Center are as buildings failures in a way you would never know only by reading the fog of praise that obscures them.

This relates to another line of criticism that my housemate, returning from her sanctum out back, describes as the ?jolly good but? school?readers in favor of my conclusions but wishing for a more comprehensive critique. To that I will say that this is a column, part of an ongoing discussion even if entered midstream, and not a series of freestanding essays aspiring to completely encircle a given subject, something that is rarely possible in 1,200 words anyway. I could no more cover all the bases in that May column than I will here in July. But I will also shamelessly refer readers looking for a more thorough discussion of the mechanics of starchitecture, the role of critics, and the effect of the whole circus on the wider profession to my 2005 book on the World Trade Center reconstruction, long stretches of which are concerned with nothing else, and which can now be purchased online for a penny.

On a final note, I do regret not having given a gentlemanly prepublication heads-up to Charles Renfro, whom I?ve known for years and like very much. But I will correct that now by extending to him an invitation to bash my backyard handiwork or to write about anything else that may be on his mind, in this space. It?s only fair.
Link (http://www.metropolismag.com/cda/story.php?artid=2889)

[JimboJones]

Article in this week's Boston Business Journal.

The Institute of Contemporary Art has been open for nearly a year but construction on the $51 million project continues today to repair a cracked floor and improperly installed stucco.

Meanwhile, the former and now-defunct contractor, George B.H. Macomber Co., is suing the ICA for $6.6 million it believes it is owed for "extra work" that was not included in the original $36.5 million contract. The lawsuit, filed July 18 in Suffolk Superior Court, does not detail the extra work Macomber performed.

Source: http://boston.bizjournals.com/boston/highlights/2007/10/15/story3.html?ana=e_ph

Unfortunately, subscription required for the full-story.

A little help?

Also, I forget, why is "ICA" under "Existing Developments"?

[vanshnookenraggen]

I moved it because it is already built and open, thus any further discussion is about an existing building, even though the building is new. I also moved the thread about Trillogy. It was also a way to save this thread from falling into the abys since there isn't as much activity in this forum as there is in New Development.

[ChunkyMonkey]

Friday, October 12, 2007

New ICA, ex-builder tangle over construction
Boston Business Journal - by Michelle Hillman Journal staff

The Institute of Contemporary Art has been open for nearly a year but construction on the $51 million project continues today to repair a cracked floor and improperly installed stucco.

Meanwhile, the former and now-defunct contractor, George B.H. Macomber Co., is suing the ICA for $6.6 million it believes it is owed for "extra work" that was not included in the original $36.5 million contract. The lawsuit, filed July 18 in Suffolk Superior Court, does not detail the extra work Macomber performed.

The ICA suffered a series of setbacks including a three-month delay in opening and cost overruns when Macomber began having financial difficulties. To ensure construction, originally scheduled to open last September, would continue uninterrupted, the ICA hired Skanska USA Building Inc. last summer to finish the project. Macomber -- a 103-year-old South Boston construction company -- announced it was closing its doors in January as a result of losses suffered following a construction accident at another Macomber project for Emerson College.

While minor repairs are generally a part of construction projects, the ICA's situation is complicated by the fact that Macomber has shuttered, leaving its bonding company, Travelers Casualty & Surety Co. of America, to hash out any additional costs resulting from project changes. The bond company could not immediately be reached for comment.

The repairs to the floor and exterior of the building are being completed by Skanska and overseen by the New York architects Diller, Scofidio + Renfro.

John D. Macomber, former president of Macomber, declined to comment. The ICA's lawyer, Jeffrey Follett of Foley Hoag LLP and Macomber's attorney, John W. DiNicola II of Holland & Knight LLP, also declined to comment.

In the lawsuit, Macomber, which is suing the ICA for breach of contract, claims the ICA delayed Macomber's work on the project "through various design deficiencies" and changes to the contract. Macomber claims the ICA also "failed and refused to grant Macomber appropriate extensions of time and to equitably adjust the contract price for such delays."

The lawsuit does not specify what time period or deficiencies Macomber is referring to.

The ICA's spokeswoman, Donna Desrochers, confirmed there were errors in the original application of the stucco on the south exterior wall and that there was "natural" cracking in the floor. She said Skanska was completing any necessary repairs and expected the stucco work to be finished next week.

"In any construction project I think there are minor (problems) that may need finishing," she said.

However, the project's architect, Flavio Stigliano, said the ICA is trying to decide how and when to fix the concrete floor in the entryway so it would not disrupt museum operations.

"There has been a problem with the way the concrete, the way the surface texture ended up looking," said Stigliano. "There have been some problems, yes ... not the entire floor but parts of it have cracked."

He said shortly after the floor dried and hardened, strange patterns and cracks appeared. Stigliano said the floor could be fixed by pouring another layer on the surface or re-pouring the entire floor. As for the stucco, Stigliano said water leaks caused the problem. There have been other minor issues that have arisen, such as condensation on one part of the museum's glass wall, which was caused by an air conditioning unit that was not fully operational, but those were taken care of last December, said Stigliano.

Desrochers would not disclose how much the repairs cost. She also declined to comment on the lawsuit.

It was unclear from the lawsuit and interviews whether Macomber was involved with the project when the problems arose with the floors and stucco. However, Stigliano said the ultimate responsibility falls on the construction company, not the architect, since the deficiencies are not design problems.

"I would go to the contractor," said Stigliano.

Source: http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/stories/2007/10/15/story3.html?b=1192420800^1533874

[JimboJones]

There's no thread on the ICA? I can't find it ... ugh.

The Institute of Contemporary Art has agreed to pay $2.2 million to settle a lawsuit with the defunct George B.H. Macomber construction company, which it hired to build its new waterfront museum.
more stories like this

The settlement, signed at the end of November, was announced almost a year after the opening of the new ICA on Fan Pier in South Boston.

Macomber filed suit in July, seeking $6.6 million. It alleged that the ICA owed it money and that changes by the ICA had delayed the project and added to the cost. The ICA replaced Macomber with Skanska USA Building Inc. last year as work fell behind schedule.

The museum, which cost $51 million to build, opened last December, three months after its planned opening date.

The ICA's deputy director, Paul Bessire, and other ICA officials declined to discuss details of the settlement.

Macomber alleged that it had not been paid for doing "extra work beyond the scope of work" in the original $36.5 million deal, signed in July 2004. The delays were due to "various design deficiencies" and "ICA ordered changes," Macomber alleged.

John W. DiNicola II, Macomber's attorney, did not return a call seeking comment yesterday.

Geoff Edgers can be reached at gedgers@globe.com.

Source: Museum to pay $2.2m to builder who sued (http://www.boston.com/realestate/news/articles/2007/12/05/museum_to_pay_22m_to_builder_who_sued/)

[KentXie]

ICA is located in the existing development forum.

http://www.archboston.org/community/showthread.php?t=990&page=15

[JimboJones]

Oh, right, I think I had the same problem, last time I posted about it.

Silly me!

(You can move my post if you'd like, Mr Moderator man ...)

[statler]

THE NEW ICA: ONE YEAR LATER
Popular? Absolutely. Bold? The jury is out.
In its new space, the museum has drawn crowds, but some supporters hope for more

By Geoff Edgers, Globe Staff | December 9, 2007

The snickers began with the first show in the Institute of Contemporary Art's new building. The art world types called "Super Vision," a survey exhibition featuring works by Jeff Koons, Ed Ruscha, and Yoko Ono, dumbed-down, name-driven, and predictable.

"It was a show of postage stamp work that we all know," grumbled Claudia Gould, the director of Philadelphia's Institute of Contemporary Art. "I don't know what they were thinking."

At Boston's ICA, they were thinking of something rarely experienced at their old home in the Back Bay: crowds. The ICA, which marks its one-year anniversary on South Boston's Fan Pier tomorrow, sent a message with "Super Vision." This was no longer a museum for the city's small, dedicated core of contemporary art lovers. The ICA was for everyone.

The museum's leaders make no apologies for the initial exhibition, and those that followed. They say the shows, which included solo exhibitions by photographer Philip-Lorca diCorcia and sculptor Louise Bourgeois, were not overly conservative even if they were meant to attract more than the hardcore group that used to visit the old ICA.

"The contemporary art world is a very small bubble and most people are not a part of that," said Nicholas Baume, the ICA's chief curator. "For most of the people that came to see the opening, the work was very risky. I had people saying to me, 'Wow, I didn't like everything in the show, but it certainly pushed the boundaries. Are you going to be as edgy as that with every show you do?' "

"Super Vision" drew 111,255 people to the ICA, making it the best-attended show in the museum's history. In fact, the exhibition, over 4 1/2 months, drew seven times more people than the old ICA saw walk through its doors during all of 1998, when director Jill Medvedow took over.

Finding a proper home was no small feat for the ICA. The museum moved 10 times since its founding in 1936, eventually ending up in a renovated former police station on Boylston Street that was so small it meant the ICA had to close between shows to move art out and in. A permanent collection was out of the question.

"Ninety-nine per cent of our audience . . . had no experience with the ICA," said Medvedow.

With the new building come new expectations. The annual budget has grown from $4.3 million to $12.6 million, its staff from 32 to 74 positions. While recognizing that first-year attendance of 300,000 is an anomaly - all new museums enjoy a boom - Medvedow projects between 200,000 and 225,000 visitors annually.

Those people aren't just coming to look at art. They're experiencing the ICA's slew of new programs, whether school and family related, or theater, film, and music events taking place in the ICA's glass-walled amphitheater.

Bill Arning, curator at MIT's List Visual Arts Center, calls himself a big fan of the new museum, but not for what's in the galleries.

"They haven't had their show yet, the show that's going to rock people's socks curatorially," said Arning. "What's been exciting is the performance program. In terms of a big addition to the cultural life of the city, that's probably been the biggest plus."

New life in the area

Matthew Nash, publisher of the online art magazine Big RED & Shiny, has heard local artists and curators waxing nostalgic for shows in the old building.

"Paul Chan comes up a lot," said Nash, referring to the artist who had one of the last shows on Boylston Street in 2005-06. "Thomas Hirschhorn. Love it or hate it, that was a widely discussed show. And I'm having difficulty imagining anything like that happening in the new space."

But for all its charm, the layout of the old ICA forced the museum to close between exhibitions; installers couldn't get one show out and another in at the same time. There was also no room for the kinds of amenities - a cafe or proper theater - expected in a modern museum. The old ICA struggled to balance its budget, and regularly depended on the generosity of deep-pocketed supporters to bail it out.

Medvedow wanted a fresh start, so she pushed hard when the city announced it was looking for a cultural institution to build a home on a plot of land between the John Joseph Moakley Courthouse and Anthony's Pier 4. There was skepticism after the city granted the site to the ICA in 1999.

But a year after the opening, city officials and local business leaders say the museum has already helped bring change to the still largely undeveloped area. Just a few days after the ICA's public opening, Mayor Thomas M. Menino referenced the museum twice in a speech announcing his desire to build a new city hall on the South Boston waterfront.

Jon Schoeck, general manager at the nearby LTK Bar and Kitchen, has seen a dramatic surge in business, particularly on Thursday nights, when the ICA has free admission.

"Also, on the weekends, we see more families," said Schoeck. "It's definitely an attraction that brings people down to the seaport."

And in the next few years, it appears the ICA will have more company in the area. In September, developer Joseph F. Fallon broke ground on the nearly million-square-foot project on land that surrounds the museum.

"What the ICA has done is bring visitors from all over the metropolitan area to a part of Boston they would otherwise not have gone," said Kairos Shen, director of planning for the Boston Redevelopment Authority. "I think people now can touch and feel the potential rather than saying it's just a place on a map."

Victoria Adjami, who runs a graphic-design firm near the ICA, had visited the old museum occasionally. But she's become a regular at the new ICA, and a member - one of 11,714 members, in fact, significantly more than double the number who had joined as of last December. (Adjami is such a fan she bought four memberships for clients.)

In the last year, Adjami noshed on veggies during members-only parties, took six of her staffers to the diCorcia show, and arrived early so she could get a seat close to the front of the theater for the October talk by musician David Byrne and evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller.

"There's so much to check out," she said. "It's not just about the one show."

Boriana Zaneva, a Boston-based artist, also joined the ICA for the first time. She praised the museum's free, once-a-month family program. Earlier this summer, she brought her daughter, Dora, 10, and three of her friends, to "Lights, Camera, Action," a hands-on activity connected to the diCorcia exhibit that gave children a chance to strike poses while using props and costumes.

Now, whenever she sees those other children, they "always ask me to take them back with me," Zaneva said. "And I had fun, too."

Kapoor and more

Hugh Davies was also impressed. The director of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Davies visited in October. He still remembers being mesmerized by the Bourgeois show and by Christian Jankowski's "Point of Sale," a video piece that's part of the ICA's new permanent collection. He's excited enough about next year's Tara Donovan show that he's arranged to have it travel to San Diego after it shows at the ICA.

"Look, I'm in the business, so I go into these places with a pretty sharp pencil, and I came away from that experience very pleased," Davies said of his visit. "I'd also say that it's a huge mistake to judge an institution on their first season."

That said, the ICA's exhibition program has grown dramatically, thanks to the new space. Its budget has increased steadily, from just over $500,000 five years ago to $1.8 million. Baume has also been able to hire more assistants. Associate curator Bennett Simpson, who left this year for the same job at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, has yet to be replaced. But by promoting Carole Anne Meehan and Jen Mergel into full-time curatorial positions, the museum now has four curators on staff. As recently as 2005, it only had two.

The ICA has had 14 exhibitions this year, including some that debuted with the opening last December. Before moving to the new space, the museum had, on average, five shows a year. The tripling of exhibition space has allowed the ICA to mix up its program, from larger and more complex shows such as the current "Design Life Now: National Design Triennial" to smaller, single-room projects and installations.

Arning said he's encouraged by what he hears about next year. In February, the museum will bring in "The World as a Stage" from the Tate Modern in London, a show meant to explore the connection between the visual arts and theater, put together by the ICA's former chief curator Jessica Morgan. And in May, the museum will open a retrospective of the work of Anish Kapoor, the sculptor who has become increasingly known for massive stainless-steel works installed in public spaces. Those include "Sky Mirror," shown last year in New York's Rockefeller Center, and "Cloud Gate," installed in 2004 in Chicago's Millennium Park.

In September, Baume and Mergel are organizing the first major museum survey of Donovan, a sculptor who constructs art out of materials ranging from pins to drinking straws.

South End gallery owner Bernard Toale is eager to see the second year of shows. The first-year exhibitions, he said, were not impressive. He passed when asked to critique "Super Vision." The diCorcia show had "too much stuff." The Bourgeois exhibition seemed "more borrowed than curated." And the current design show "didn't feel appropriate for the ICA."

"I think you give them the first year without even questioning anything," said Toale. "Year two you really start to analyze the programming."

Yet Toale considers the new ICA a resounding success.

"I'm still just so thrilled that they are up and running and made it through the first year," he said. "Almost anything aside from that hardly matters."

Geoff Edgers can be reached at gedgers@globe.com
Link (http://www.boston.com/ae/theater_arts/articles/2007/12/08/popular_absolutely_bold_the_jury_is_out/)

[czsz]

The ICA's critics can't seriously expect it to go really far to advance the vanguard of contemporary design. Not in this city. Not in that little space. Not now. Baby steps, at most.

[Mike]

ICA's new space is honored as a work of art
Architects' society awards medal to the museum

By Robert Campbell
Globe Correspondent / January 6, 2008


This is the season for giving presents. Architects love to give each other presents. These take the form of prizes for good design.

Do lawyers do this? Is there an award for the most elegantly argued brief of the year? Doctors? A medal for the most artistic appendectomy?

Unlike those other professionals, architects think of their profession as one of the fine arts. A great building, they believe -like a great novel or film - is a work of art and deserves the same kind of public recognition.

Boston is unique among American cities in that it's been presenting a prize for the best building of the year since 1923. It's called the Parker Medal and was initiated by an architect named J. Harleston Parker.

The medal is administered by the Boston Society of Architects, which each year appoints a new jury, of architects plus some others, to choose what Parker defined as "the most beautiful piece of architecture, building, monument or structure within the limits of the City of Boston or of the Metropolitan Parks District."

The list of winners down through the decades, many of them now either more obscure or less beloved than they once were, is a marvelous index of changing tastes. The Motor Mart Garage in Park Square (1927)? St. Clement's Church, in Somerville (1946)? Boston City Hall (1969)?

This year's Parker Medalist is the Institute of Contemporary Art, on the South Boston waterfront. No surprise here, since the ICA is probably the most praised new Boston building in years. The architects are the New York firm of Diller Scofidio + Renfro, with local associates Perry Dean Rogers.

But if the ICA is no surprise, it's still interesting to read the comments of this year's jury. They didn't always agree.

"The decision to recommend the ICA for this award was a polarizing one for the committee," says the report. "The dissenting voices found the building to be an unnecessarily showy effort that happened to benefit from a beautiful site. The galleries, which were purposely understated to avoid competition with the art, were perceived by some jurors as lost opportunities."

But the majority ruled: "The architects and the client understood that the function and meaning of museums require re-examination. . . . Until recently, the museum, as a building type, was a civic but introverted warehouse for viewing art. At the ICA, the architect/client team created a building that feels like a cultural and educational center, open and welcome to the public."

That's the best thing about awards of this kind. They jar us into thinking about what we like and why we like it. Or what we don't like.

There were four runners-up for the Parker:

The Springstep Center for Dance, in Medford (Andrew Cohen Architects). Disagreement again: "Some jurors praised the project enthusiastically and others found the style derivative rather than inventive." Dissenters argued that the big picture window, intended to offer the public a view of activities inside, frames only the parking lot when seen from within.
more stories like this

Arnold Arboretum Classroom and Shrub and Vine Collection (Maryann Thompson Architects with Reed Hilderbrand as landscape architects). "A place of repose and education where a light wood and steel-framed pavilion rises from an elegant system of stone garden walls and terraced parterres. . .. Vines are displayed . . . as art would be in a gallery."

Stata Center, at MIT (Frank Gehry Partners with Cannon Design). The jury is chilly to say the least on Frank Gehry's crazily inventive lab building, which is designed to look, in places, as if it's on the brink of toppling over: "Ultimately, this was not in our view a strong contender for the award." (Perhaps agreeing with the jury, MIT is now suing both the architect and the builder for alleged construction flaws.)

Leonard Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge (Christian Menn, engineer). "Becoming a Boston icon," write the jurors. But they agree with this critic that the bridge's twin towers, with are shaped to imitate the top of the Bunker Hill Monument, "diminish the effect of both the monument and the bridge."

Besides the Parker Medal, the Boston Society of Architects named other winners in various categories. The highest are called Honor Awards, given for buildings that can be located anywhere as long as they're designed by Boston-area architects.

The jury here consisted of three architects from other parts of the United States. They picked only five buildings for Honor Awards. They write that they found Boston architecture rather conservative (no surprise there), but also notably competent. "We found no new style trends upon which to remark," they say, and then conclude: "Even relatively safe design can be both eloquent and seductive."

The winners, all from Boston or Cambridge:

Brian Healy, for a recital hall shoehorned into a former carriage house at Brown University.

Machado and Silvetti, for the renovation and expansion of the Getty Villa museum in Los Angeles. (Architecture is always collaborative, but this one is amazing. The architects list, by name, 75 employees who worked on the Getty project over a period of years.)

The firm Payette, for a lab and museum building for the earth sciences at Amherst College.

Maryann Thompson, for a riverfront house in a large meadow in Westport, Massachusetts.

Elizabeth Whittaker (now MergeArchitects), for a Newton Center nail salon interior -Miniluxe - that morphs into a lounge and party venue in the evenings.

The jurors complain, in their report, that they didn't see much interest in sustainability - so-called green architecture - in the buildings they were asked to review, or much low-budget work, or much work by younger, edgier designers.

Those are qualities it would be nice to find when prize time rolls around again next year.

Robert Campbell is the Globe's architecture critic. He can be reached at camglobe@aol.com.


Link (http://www.boston.com/ae/theater_arts/articles/2008/01/06/icas_new_space_is_honored_as_a_work_of_art/)

[Ron Newman]

Anyone have a photo of that Arboretum building?

[AC]

http://archrecord.construction.com/projects/portfolio/archives/images/0510arboretumA_lg.jpg

It's on the Centre Street side, across from the Home for the Little Wanderers, a little ways down from the Faulkner.

[kmp1284]

http://www.maryannthompson.com/projects/proj1.html

http://www.reedhilderbrand.com/reedhilderbrand.htm --> menu --> work --> institutional --> AA Shrub & Vine

[statler]

Been There
One year later, four views of the Institute of Contemporary Art
Pages 14?19
14 ab ❘ ArchitectureBoston
January?February 2008 ❘ ab 15

Edward Lifson

Yes, I?ve been there. But only twice. Once last winter as a tourist,and once now that I?ve moved to Boston. Since I didn?t live here when it opened, I missed most of the brouhaha. Perhaps I come to it with less baggage.

The first time I visited, I put less pressure on the building. I probably thought a little less about how it might function as a museum that I would visit regularly. I wanted an exciting architectural experience ? a tourist?s entertainment ? something that would communicate to me in broad strokes about museums and cities and art.

That first time, I was somewhat disappointed. Anybody who works at a museum knows it?s hard to get people in; the building can help seduce them.

But as you approach the ICA through the parking lots ? at least until the neighborhood is developed ? you?re met with a fa?ade that belongs on an alley.

The large glass elevator, which could be a signature for the place, is hard to find and presents little drama. The ?mediatheque? is a room of quiet contemplation, a sort of seaman?s chapel. But its view down to the water ? no earth or sky, no beginning or end, just ?nothingness? ? is so forced it makes you miss your freedom to explore. The concept is better than the experience. It?s a straitjacket of a room.

I barely remember the galleries from that first visit. They are plain, serviceable enough, but the spaces seem small, particularly for viewing contemporary art.

I was gratified that the gift shop seemed almost hidden and that the caf? was not overdone. I loved the theater, with two glass walls featuring views of the sea and sky that connect performances to the life of the city. And I loved the outside seating, under the cantilever, making nature and Boston the spectacle, open around the clock.

So now I am living here. I intend to visit the ICA often. I now need this same building to do more work for me ? to work well as a museum. On my first visit as a resident, I was at once more pleased, and more disappointed.

Even with its curving contemporary form, the building still feels subdued. The wood that wraps around the building is purposely faded, like pre-washed denim. Nearly all surfaces are muted. Little inside the building sharpens my vision or my senses. Bland artificial light is cast too evenly in the galleries.

Outside, the milky glass around the gallery level looks more like Target than like Cartier.

But I like the solidity of the place and its lack of arrogant geometries; the calmness of its few materials is handled well. This allows you to see art in a peaceful setting, even if it?s not an exhilarating one. You can visit often and enjoy the ICA without being irritated. It offers polite views of an already polite city.

And maybe that?s what makes it a Boston building.

A former NPR correspondent and host of a Chicago Public Radio
program on architecture and design, Edward Lifson is a Loeb
Fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. He blogs on
architecture at www.edwardlifson.com.


Ross Miller

Are artists just big complainers? Ask local artists what they think about the ICA ? as I did recently ? and you?ll get similar responses: great appreciation that this wonderful building exists, followed by gripes about the institution?s current relationship to the local community.

Consider this context: the act of looking at artwork has been blown open by postmodernism and cultural relativism. The viewer is free to interpret meaning, independent of the original artist?s intentions. Practicing artists similarly feel empowered to look through their particular lens, then to scavenge and steal from current artmaking practices for their own work. This promotes feisty independence and strong opinions about artwork and any institution that displays it.

This context is further shaped locally by the fact that many artists here make an active choice to live in Boston rather than New York. That decision may also contain a commitment to create work informed by a regional understanding of place, intellectual values, political ideals, even New England individuality. Artists also want relationships, connections, and personal interactions with critical local institutions.

The question becomes whether the ICA wants to be that institution for local artists. It?s a question on the mind of many artists:

?The ICA has never made much effort to engage with artists living in Boston. It has a reputation for showing work that might well be ordered off the pages of Artforum magazine.?
?The ICA went to Fort Point Channel never acknowledging that it was
about to be neighbor to artists who had been there for years.?
?Most artists in the area think they have been ?cut out? again.?
?The opening event for artists was great. I have had no reason to go there since.?
?If the ICA can?t really do more than it has in the past, it will remain marginal in the lives of the artists in the city. It is possible to exhibit work being made in this area along with national and the international stars? I?d like to see that
happen.?
Even with this desire for more engagement, most artists praise the gift that is the ICA building:
?The building is magical: being in the overhanging video room feels like being inside a three-dimensional Edward Hopper painting, careening into the sea without proper grounding. Breathtaking.?
?The long seaward corridor is a wonderful respite from hard looking.?
?The building brings attention and excitement to contemporary art in Boston.? ?The achievement of raising funds and building a truly noteworthy building is a major accomplishment.?

So desire is here, potential exists. An exquisite building sited near New England?s largest working artist community is a start.

In the past, through Vita Brevis and other programs, the ICA has demonstrated its commitment to local places and artists.

Understandably, much of the new ICA?s first year was devoted to stewarding its benefactors. At the beginning of its second year, many are wondering if the ICA will expand its commitment to local and regional artists and find new and unexpected ways to engage them. Its choices now will influence the institution it will become and the degree to which it can become a catalyst that sparks a new level of excitement about creating and collecting
contemporary art in Boston.

Ross Miller is a visual artist who creates art in public spaces
and is currently designing a series of outdoor classrooms with
the Boston Schoolyard Initiative. Quoted comments are from
conversations with a number of artists and gallery owners.


Deborah Weisgall

The ICA hunkers down at the edge of the harbor. A cube of opaque panels, translucent panels, glimmers of clear glass, it invites simile. It looks like a sleek electronic toy, or an alien?s dwelling. But it turned its back on the parking lot ? and on my husband and me ? like a stuck-up kid who thinks he?s much
cooler than you are. It put us off; it put us on edge.

We couldn?t figure out how to get in. The entrance off to the left lacked even the romance of a stage door, so we walked around the building to the water side, to the wide boardwalk, the bleachers rising beside the harbor, the great cantilevered roof, the glass walls.

The architecture had opened up and became eloquent and wise, surprising and poetical. A cold front was blowing over; the edge of clouds cut diagonally across the view framed by the building. A sloop out for a late sail heeled in the wind. A plane took off, a plane landed, and the airport ferry crossed the gray
harbor. On the far shore, Winthrop?s small hill bristling with triple-deckers appeared to be a Cubist landscape. We saw familiar Boston with new clarity, aware of changing light across the sky and water, aware of geography: exposed to setting and place, marveling at it.

The ICA building has elevated its site to art.

And maybe that was why it was still so difficult to find a way inside. We headed for a door set in the glass wall of the restaurant. With lingering resentment, I was sure that it would be locked, but it wasn?t. We had something to eat, admired the view some more, and headed in. We came at the big art wall from the wrong angle, so it didn?t make much of an impression, but the elevator to the fourth floor gallery was worth the journey. A glass rectangle, it rose through its own mechanics while revealing views of both the inside of the building and the harbor outside; in a way it seemed a short tour of the building?s core idea: a play on transparency. The galleries, with their concrete floors and moveable walls, were the only places you couldn?t see through to the waterfront; they had the feeling of a garage, of a staging area, a temporary shifting space that freed us to take the ICA?s collection as part of the flux, too.

Quite an achievement: the architecture had jolted us and made us receptive; it lifted a barrier of reticence between viewer and art, a barrier that we might not have been aware of until it was gone. Transparency leads to immediacy, and the building constantlyreminded us of the site. The water was everywhere we looked. It had a gallery of its own, lined with benches on which to sit and look out at the harbor. The computer room tapered into a long window framing the infinite patterns of waves: a screen-saver ? or a work of art.

We stayed all afternoon. The ICA exudes an active intelligence; it?s much the coolest building around. It frames possibility and change; it?s a study in scale, in presence and reticence, balancing bravado and decorum. And it has strong ideas about how we should see. Of course it would refuse to pay attention to a parking lot. ■

Deborah Weisgall writes about the arts for The New York Times
and other publications. Her novel The World Before Her will be
published by Houghton Mifflin in 2008.


Gretchen Schneider, Assoc. AIA

It?s 8PM on a dark October night. The Red Sox, playing tonight, are down 3-1 in the American League playoffs and still the ICA is alive with people. The energy is palpable, and I actually overhear teenagers asking each other out loud: ?What do you think that means?? If a museum does no more than this, it has succeeded.

It?s exciting to have a building that people are excited about.

Standing out there on that deck with the big gallery cantilevered over my head, I feel the building reaching out to the harbor. The gesture is wonderful and extraordinary enough that you don?t need to be fluent in contemporary architectural discourse or even an architect to appreciate this building. And for the current case of Modern architecture in Boston, that?s a refreshing change.

Think about it: How many Boston buildings do we have ?really ? that acknowledge the water in a big way? The New England Aquarium was first, in the 1960s; as it put the fish in tanks (instead of nets), it established the waterfront as a public destination and place for dramatic architectural expression.

Similarly the JFK Library in the 1970s, Rowes Wharf in the 1980s, and the Moakley Courthouse in the 1990s each demonstrated an increasingly civic attitude towards Boston?s evolving waterfront while declaring Boston?s place in the contemporary architectural scene. As part of the ICA?s lineage, each of these projects expresses an architectural and urban vitality, albeit one cloaked in increasingly conservative garments. Until the ICA.

What?s distressing about the ICA is how fleeting its vital moment may be. I can?t help but wonder what will happen when the city grows up around this building.

On the harbor side, there?s a certain contemplative magic that will be lost when, instead of peering down through the giant oculus of the ?mediatheque? onto water, we instead have a direct line on big snazzy yachts in an exclusive marina. Which, if the renderings featured in the Fallon Company?s website and ads are to be believed, is exactly what?s on its way.

On the land side, the illuminated channel glass looks sexy, especially at night, hovering four stories above the half-empty parking lots. But as hip as it is, it?s really little more than an elegant billboard. Unlike other museums in North Atlantic cities (such as Steven Holl?s Kiasma in Helsinki), here the institution does not benefit from the material?s properties: the translucent glass wall neither filters light into the space nor reflects interior activity out toward the city. Even as a billboard, it?s already been upstaged by WGBH?s new, ever-changing digital face to the Mass Pike. Regardless, it?ll be hard to see once it?s hidden by the tall new buildings now on their way.

As the parking lots give way to buildings, the focus will shift to the sidewalk experience, and that, sadly, is the most bleak. Soon the ICA?s back side will be the front wall of a sidewalk, defining the pedestrian experience of a new neighborhood.

Though the materials are finely detailed and definitely of our time, are the metal panels, opaque glass, stairway-to-nowhere, and one-way exit doors all that different from the blank face at the base of City Hall?
There was a time when Boston was abuzz about City Hall, too. ■

Gretchen Schneider, Assoc. AIA, is the principal of Schneider
Studio in Boston.

ArchitectureBoston
Published by the Boston Society of Architects
52 Broad Street, Boston, MA 02109
617.951.1433
bsa@architects.org
www.architectureboston.com
January/February 2008, Vol. 11 No. 1, ?2007: The Year in Review?
Link(PDF) (http://www.architects.org/documents/publications/ab/janfeb2008/Been_There.pdf)

[Mike]

ICA exceeds capital campaign goal
Monday, May 12, 2008 - 2:50 PM EDT
Boston Business Journal


The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston announced Monday it has raised $75 million in its capital campaign -- exceeding its $50 million goal.

The harborside museum opened in December 2006 after construction delays. It was designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro and cost about $41 million to build.

The campaign allowed the museum to increase its endowment from $1.5 million to $10 million as well as expand its programs, including launching a new performing arts program

More than 700 people gave to the Campaign for the New ICA, launched in April 2000. About $66 million was raised by December 2006.

"The completion of this campaign represents a sea change in how Boston supports contemporary art," says Jill Medvedow, the museum's director, in a statement. "The vision of a forum for new art and ideas galvanized the community -- from leading philanthropists to teens participating in ICA programs, from major corporations to family foundations. It is not only a triumph for Boston's culture but a symbol of its civic health."

In 2007, the ICA received the Harleston Parker Medal, presented periodically to the "most beautiful building" in the Greater Boston area by the Boston Society of Architects and Boston.


Link (http://boston.bizjournals.com/boston/stories/2008/05/12/daily10.html)

[czsz]

It's a moneymaker! Too bad it's also walled in and can't expand.

[unterbau]

It's a moneymaker! Too bad it's also walled in and can't expand.
Naw, they can just keep adding to the cantilever.

[BeeLine]

About a month ago a crane was spoted at the ICA. No one seemed to know what it was doing there, but I think this photo may provide us an answer. Check out the diving platform. The ICA is hosting the Red Bull Cliff Driving competition on August 25th. They also hosted it last year.
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7279/7483547792_a6e5cc912b_c.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/beelinebos/7483547792/)
ICA Boston 7/1 (http://www.flickr.com/photos/beelinebos/7483547792/)
Don't you just love to people watch?

[datadyne007]

Love how you can see the people inhabiting the North Gallery.

[DZH22]

Love how you can see the people inhabiting the North Gallery.

They all either have bad taste, or don't know what they got themselves into.

[datadyne007]

They all either have bad taste, or don't know what they got themselves into.

I don't understand.

[DZH22]

I don't understand.

It was the worst museum I have ever been to, and that's saying a lot. It had one decent room, and the rest of it was absolutely terrible. Contemporary art is hardly art at all.

For instance, one of the displays was a large piece of posterboard that had about 100 wheels cut out from magazines and pasted on it. It also had a couple other random things pasted on from magazines. It was worth maybe around a C+/B- in my 3rd grade art class.

Another one was a bunch of old speakers arranged in a square. The speakers were kind of cool, but the whole display was very much on par with this picture I took in Somerville...

http://i424.photobucket.com/albums/pp322/DZH22/Random/IMG_0355.jpg

If the ICA knew about this, they would be salivating. I'm not sure what I regretted more: paying the entrance fee (now $15) or wasting the hour of my life.

[BostonUrbEx]

http://i424.photobucket.com/albums/pp322/DZH22/Random/IMG_0355.jpg

LMAO! Is this the place over near where the Union Square station is going?

[DZH22]

LMAO! Is this the place over near where the Union Square station is going?

I'm not sure where that station is going but yes, it's right by Union Square on Prospect Street, which connects it over to Central Square.