Jill Medvedow, Ellen Matilda Poss Director of the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA), has announced two major grants from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The Warhol Foundation grant of $100,000 will support the exhibition The Artist’s Museum, opening in Nov. 2016, which examines the nature of collections and reveals art’s unexpected relationships through the lens of contemporary artists. The Mellon Foundation grant of $500,000 will support curatorial research, graduate fellowships, and publications for three major curatorial projects: Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today (2018); Mark Dion (2017); and The Artist’s Museum (2016).
Upon announcement of the two grants, Jill Medvedow commented, “We are tremendously grateful to the Andrew W. Mellon and Andy Warhol Foundations. These projects continue the ICA’s scholarly explorations into urgent questions in contemporary art, specifically: the impact of the Internet and digital culture on contemporary artists, curators, and museums; the way knowledge is organized and made accessible; and the related tension between the ephemeral and the material in contemporary art practice and museums.”
Under the leadership of Eva Respini, Barbara Lee Chief Curator, the ICA continues its inquiry into key shifts in contemporary art and culture over the last 25 years. The three Mellon-funded curatorial projects—Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today; Mark Dion; and The Artist’s Museum—all address the relationships between the making of objects and the acquisition of knowledge, highlighting the transformation of both activities since the advent of the Internet and its impact on creating, collecting, and curating art today. “We are very grateful to have been selected for these awards,” said Respini. “These funds support our mission to provide inspiration, education, and build a creative community through public access to contemporary art and artists.”
Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today will examine how the Internet has changed how artists see the world, make their work, and disseminate information and images. Highlighting Boston’s role as a leading center of technology, the exhibition will involve Boston-area arts organizations on innovative programmatic events to create a dynamic, citywide experience. Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today features the work of approximately 30 artists from around the globe and is comprised of a variety of mediums—including painting, performance, photography, sculpture, and video— that incorporate the extensive effects of the Internet in their realization. Themes explored in the exhibition include emergent ideas of the body and notions of human enhancement; the Internet as a site of both surveillance and resistance; the circulation and control of images and information; possibilities for new subjectivities, communities, and virtual worlds; and the aesthetics of corporate culture and branding. Throughout, the work in this landmark exhibition addresses the Internet-age democratization of culture that comprises our current moment.
The first U.S. survey of the internationally recognized artist, Mark Dion spans the past 25 years, bringing together many of the artist’s most significant works. The exhibition combines a series of single-room installations with large gallery presentations of sculpture, drawing, and photography, as well as models of major public artworks. Informed by a deep knowledge of history and contemporary issues, these diverse projects illuminate the wondrous, absurd, and macabre outcomes that occur when the natural and cultural worlds collide.
The Artist’s Museum presents immersive installations which feature collections of art, artifacts, and natural material, creating distinct models from each artist’s world. Employing the language of museum display, the artists chart the recurrence of forms and themes across cultures and history, revealing unexpected relationships and affinities and engaging a variety of disciplines and subjects, from dance, music, and design, to gender, sexuality, and technology. Among the artists included are Rosa Barba, Carol Bove, Anna Craycroft, Mark Leckey, Pierre Leguillon, Goshka Macuga, and Christian Marclay.