I have been looking forward to visiting the new Diller Scofidio + Renfro designed ICA Boston for some time now. On approaching it from the parking lot, it wasn't exactly the thrill of seeing Herzog & De Meuron'sTate Modern, but as Boston Cyberarts director George Fifield pointed out to me that evening, when the harbor is fully built out, the ICA will be completely surrounded, and the real view will be from across the harbor - or from inside the ICA, which is stunning.
In the Super Vision show, Yoko Ono'sSky TV was transmitting images of the sky over the harbor. When I was there, the education department had kids act out various emotions as one of the staff read an Ono poem in front of the piece.
The New York Times'sHolland Cotterwrote about Super Vision that "too much of what's around them is too familiar." While there is plenty to argue with in the show's lacunae as well, I enjoyed the breadth of work and seeing, again, highlights such as Julie Mehretu'sDispersion (2002), Mona Hatounm'sCorps Etranger (1994), a great installation of Chantal Ackerman'sFrom the Other Side (2002), and a typically stunning James Turrell work, New Light (1989).
The mediatheque is simple and simply breathtaking. Almost all of the stations were filled with both children and adults clicking and listening away. These kinds of stations are almost never used at, for example, SFMOMA, at least whenever I'm there, even though the program itself is amazing, so I have to believe that part of their apparent success at ICA is the sheer joy of the steep setting.
When I first started seeing designs for the ICA, lo these many years, the cantilevered theater was going to use "smart glass" to darken the space. As sexy as this idea was, it never seemed believable to me, and I took perverse note that some of the curtains they ended up using to black out the space already have duct tape repairs to them.
Still, overall, the ICA was a thrilling experience with lots of great art. The only downside is that even though no one else seems to agree with me, it makes me even sadder that Diller + Scofidio's version of Eyebeam was never built. As great as Eyebeam's programming is, it would have made another and important kind of difference to have a statement like Diller + Scofidio's vision for the field.
