Word: ica
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...ICA is dedicated to the newest works of art, so if there is any institution likely to seek out unconventional architects, it's that one. All the same, who expected that Diller and Scofidio, well known as skeptics about the whole idea of museums, would end up designing one? When New York City's Whitney Museum of American Art gave them a big retrospective three years ago, they underlined their ambivalence about becoming insiders by having a little robot programmed to roll around for the duration of the show drilling holes in the gallery walls...
...time of the Whitney retrospective, Diller and Scofidio had already been at work for two years on the ICA project. So for all their ambivalence, they were plainly well on their way to making peace with the idea of museums--or at least the ones they could have a hand in shaping. Plus, they say, there had been a generational shift in the people who run the art world. "People were coming into institutions," explains Diller, "who were rethinking the contemporary museum." One of the people she's talking about would have to be Jill Medvedow, the cheerful locomotive...
...would be a $50 million risk, but one that paid off beautifully. The new ICA is a fascinating combination of public and private spaces, as well as a building that comments ingeniously on its own chief purpose, which is to foster the art of looking. It can only have helped that Diller and Scofidio came to the job with experience as artists. When architects think of themselves that way, it's usually because they see themselves, like Frank Gehry, creating sculptural form. But Diller and Scofidio have been conceptual artists, more concerned with ideas than the objects they shape them...
...that reason, the new ICA has glass everywhere, both clear and translucent, which is unusual for a museum, a place that has to protect artworks from direct light. The architects have got around that problem by clustering the galleries in enclosed space on the fourth floor while placing most of the public spaces on the lower, more light-filled, levels. Even the 325-seat theater space is bounded on two sides by double-height glass walls so that performances can take place against the backdrop of the harbor. (The walls can also be closed off with scrims when necessary...
...viewing decks and glass elevators are things you can find in a lot of buildings that don't come with elaborate theoretical justifications. The truly impressive aesthetic gamesmanship at the ICA takes place in the deceptively simple Mediatheque, a sloping room with grandstand-style seating, each tier equipped with computer stations for looking at digital artworks and downloading videos about artists. Suspended at an angle from beneath the long, cantilevered upper story, the room culminates in a window wall that looks down directly onto the surface of Boston Harbor, roughly 40 ft. below. The result is the kind of view...