Image: Opening preview of “Andy Warhol” exhibition, the Institute of Contemporary Art (October 1 – November 6, 1966): Left to right, Holly Solomon, Andy Warhol, and International Velvet (Susan Bottomly), September 30, 1966. ICA Archives, Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston
The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, is marking its 90th anniversary with "90 YEARS," an exhibition that returns to nine exhibitions and initiatives from its past. The show is on view from October 15, 2026, to March 7, 2027, in the museum's Bridgitt and Bruce Evans and Karen and Brian Conway Galleries.
Founded in 1936 as the Boston Museum of Modern Art, a sister institution to the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the ICA is among the oldest museums in the United States devoted to contemporary art. In 1948 it took its current name to signal a focus on the art of its own time, a shift its leaders tied to the "world chaos and social unrest" of the postwar years. Over nine decades the institution has occupied thirteen different locations.
The exhibition was put together by the ICA's curatorial team and, according to the museum, uses the institution's history as a way of thinking about its future. Among the episodes revisited is "Modern Mexican Painters" of 1941, which brought the work of José Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siqueiros and their contemporaries to many American viewers for the first time.
Another chapter returns to 1966, when the ICA presented a survey of Andy Warhol and gave the first performance of his Exploding Plastic Inevitable, a mix of live music, dance and projected film featuring the Velvet Underground. The show also recalls the Contemporary Art Television (CAT) Fund: between 1984 and 1991, the ICA and WGBH's New Television Workshop commissioned and co-produced more than twenty video works for broadcast, by artists including Laurie Anderson, Joan Jonas and Tony Oursler.
More recent milestones are included as well. In 2006 the ICA moved into its waterfront building designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro and began building a permanent collection; among its acquisitions is Yayoi Kusama's "LOVE IS CALLING" (2013), one of the artist's largest infinity mirror rooms. In 2022 the museum commissioned Simone Leigh's presentation for the United States at the 59th Venice Biennale, later bringing her ceramic and bronze sculptures back to Boston in a touring survey.
Images published with the exhibition also point to works by Glenn Ligon, Clarissa Tossin and Ree Morton, as well as archival material such as a 1952 installation view of "Design in Industry" and photographs from the 1966 Warhol opening preview.
The curatorial team behind the show is led by Ruth Erickson, the ICA's Barbara Lee Chief Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs, together with Jeffrey De Blois, Erika Umali, Tessa Bachi Haas, Meghan Clare Considine and Max Gruber.
