Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston

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Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston

Established	1936
Location	South Boston Seaport District, Boston, Massachusetts
Website	www.icaboston.org

The Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) is an art museum and exhibition space located in Boston, in the U.S. state of Massachusetts. The museum was founded in 1936 with a mission to exhibit contemporary art.

1 New Building
2 Critical response
3 Gallery
4 External links

[edit] New Building

Formerly located on Boylston Street in the Back Bay neighborhood, the ICA moved to a new facility in the Seaport District area of South Boston. The museum celebrated the completion of its new building the weekend of December 9-10, 2006. The new building coincided with the museum's launch of its first permanent collection.

The new building was designed by the architectural firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro,. It is one of that firm's first structures to be built, and the first to be built in the United States. It is also the first new art museum to be built in Boston in over a century.

The building is located between the Courthouse and World Trade Center stations on the MBTA Silver Line.

[edit] Critical response

The building's design, which echoes that of nearby waterfront gantry cranes, has been celebrated by many critics for its openness, represented by its exterior grand staircase, and willingness to embrace the surrounding harbor. It has also been called a "botched box" by architecture critic Philip Nobel, who criticised it for having poor circulation, a dull facade facing land, and casting into shadow the harborside promenade that Elizabeth Diller once referred to as "Boston’s only viable civic space." ^[1]