ICA Summer 2024 Opening Celebration

Join us for an evening in celebration of Where I Learned to Look: Art from the Yard and Joanna Piotrowska: unseeing eyes, restless bodies. More details to come!

We will open to the public on Friday, July 12th 7PM for the public celebration. Regular hours will resume on Saturday, July13th.

Please contact Brittany Clottey, ICA Public Engagement Project Manager and Administrative Coordinator, at [email protected] with any questions.

ASL interpretation will be provided for this program.

ICA is committed to creating a welcoming environment for all visitors. For more notes on accessibility including accessible parking nearby visit our Accessibility landing page. If you require any accessibility accommodations or have any questions about the program, please contact Brittany Clottey ([email protected]).

Where I Learned to Look: Art from the Yard celebrates the foundational role of yards in shaping contemporary art in America. Building upon existing scholarship on Yard Art, artwork created to exist in the transitional space between the home and wider world, artist and art historian Josh T. Franco examines the lineage of this robust American art form which has historically existed outside of museum and gallery spaces. Featuring over 30 works, the exhibition spotlights both community and academically taught artists over the past five decades including David Driskell, vanessa german, Donald Judd, Noah Purifoy, and Finnegan Shannon, revealing connections across communities in creative world-building with what is available. This exhibition is part of ICA’s Sachs Guest Curator Program, which since 2007 has funded artists and interdisciplinary creatives to curate ambitious contemporary art presentations and actualize projects that leverage the space of resources of ICA to examine emerging and underrecognized creative practices.

Joanna Piotrowska: unseeing eyes, restless bodies marks the first U.S. solo museum exhibition dedicated to Joanna Piotrowska (b. 1985), a Polish artist based in London whose work examines the human condition through performative acts, photography, and film. Self-defense manuals and psychotherapeutic methods are used as reference points as Piotrowska explores the complex roles that play out in everyday life. The exhibition features large-scale, silver gelatin prints of subjects that probe human behavior and the dynamics of domestic relations, exploring intimacy, violence, control, and self-protection with an emphasis on gesture and touch. Throughout the galleries, the artist creates a space with domestic references from which contrasting image placement and content create an uncanny experience that reveals moments of care as well as hierarchies of power.

is the inaugural project for a new series that commissions artists to activate the façade of ICA’s building in partnership with Maharam. For this iteration, Mutiti combines African hair braiding patterns with symbols often found in ironwork. She reimagines the decorative architectural features first created by enslaved blacksmiths from West Africa which is now found across the United States, including in Philadelphia. This exhibition is organized by Hallie Ringle, Daniel and Brett Sundheim Chief Curator.

Programming at ICA is made possible in part by the Emily and Jerry Spiegel Fund to Support Contemporary Culture and Visual Arts and the Lise Spiegel Wilks and Jeffrey Wilks Family Foundation. Public and Student Engagement at ICA is supported by the Bernstein Public Engagement Fund, Suzanne Weiss Doft & Jacob W. Doft, Stacey & Robert Goergen Jr., Hilarie L. & Mitchell Morgan, the Nash Family Foundation, Joline & David Stemerman, and by Dana McDonald Strong & Mark W. Strong.

*Image by PhoByMo

Host or Publisher Institute of Contemporary Art