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In the late 1980s, the Institute of Contemporary Art organized \u201cThe Perfect Moment,\u201d a retrospective of works by photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. The exhibition included sexually explicit and homoerotic images, and while it caused a slight stir in Philadelphia, the show went on to other cities, where it drew more than a little attention.<\/p>\n
Jesse Helms \u2014 the anti-gay, anti-Civil Rights Republican senator from North Carolina \u2014 led a charge to cut funding to the National Endowment for the Arts, which had given a grant toward the show.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf someone wants to write ugly, nasty things on the men\u2019s room wall, the taxpayers do not provide the crayons,\u201d Helms told the New York Times.<\/p>\n
The ICA suddenly found itself Exhibit A in a national controversy about government censorship and the role of art. Washington\u2019s Corcoran Gallery of Art canceled the show\u2019s appearance there, and obscenity charges were brought against another stop, Cincinnati\u2019s Contemporary Arts Center, and its leader (ultimately acquitted by a jury).<\/p>\n
Ugly as the episode was, it cemented the ICA\u2019s reputation as a place where artists and curators could take risks. Given the current resurgence of issues around government funding and government censorship, the question recurs: Should the ICA of today be meeting the current political and cultural questions in its galleries?<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a hard question because I think, \u2018Yes, for sure.\u2019 But also, \u2018To what end?\u2019 is always a question, and \u2018How and with what outcome in mind?\u2019\u201d said ICA director Johanna Burton<\/a>. <\/p>\n If Burton is searching for nuance, it\u2019s understandable. For one thing, the ICA stands at a vulnerable intersection. It is both an institution with artistic edge very much in its DNA, and as part of the University of Pennsylvania<\/a>, which, like many other institutions, has already found itself in the crosshairs<\/a> of the Trump administration.<\/p>\n For another, Burton, 54, is new \u2014 she took over Oct. 1 \u2014 and is only just past the listening stage and beginning to plot out her first moves.<\/p>\n About the ICA\u2019s role as a place for shaking things up, she says: \u201cWhat made it revolutionary, or made it radical, or made it relevant are not the same things that will do any of that today.\u201d<\/p>\n Burton says that some ICA shows comment on the current state of affairs stealthily \u2014 like the exhibition currently on display, \u201cA World in the Making: The Shakers.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cI think even the Shaker show is an attempt to think through alternative modes of democratic society. There\u2019s probably nothing that we show that doesn\u2019t in some way bear upon the present, but it might not always do so directly.\u201d<\/p>\n Burton did engage directly with relevance in her previous post. She was director of the Museum of Contemporary Arts in Los Angeles for four years, and, just after leaving, the museum opened \u201cMonuments,\u201d co-organized and copresented with visual arts space the Brick. The show juxtaposed decommissioned Confederate statues with work by contemporary artists like Kara Walker, Dav\u00f3ne Tines, Martin Puryear, and Andres Serrano.<\/p>\n \u201cSeveral of the show\u2019s cleverest inclusions draw power from the contrast between Confederate propaganda\u2019s relentless visibility and the cultivated amnesia that surrounds so much even very recent Black history,\u201d wrote the New Yorker of the show, which was conceived before Burton\u2019s arrival and was not curated by her, but she helped make it happen.<\/p>\n The ICA is different from most other museums. It has no permanent collection, but, rather, presents a rolling schedule of programs and temporary exhibitions. It is small, with just three galleries, and sees only about 20,000 visitors each year \u2014 fewer than 100 per day.<\/p>\n But, Burton notes, the ICA and a small group of like-minded institutes in the U.S. play a \u201cspecial role in the ecosystem, with a sweet spot of supporting and highlighting new ideas and experimental processes by artists before they appear on the popular radar or, sometimes, long after they should have been detected.\u201d<\/p>\n Its chief curator is Hallie Ringle, and what\u2019s on view there is decided by her in collaboration with Burton and members of the curatorial and engagement teams. Penn remains \u201cvery much in consultation,\u201d said Burton. As far as her own artistic imprint goes, \u201cI will probably curate a show here, but I don\u2019t find that to be a necessity.\u201d<\/p>\n That might be because the majority of her job \u2014 \u201c92% of my time,\u201d she jokes \u2014 is tending not directly to art, but to the things that support it. One question mark is the future of the building, which the ICA \u2014 founded in 1963 \u2014 built and moved into in 1991.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a good time to \u201ctake a look\u201d at the building, said Burton. Does that mean staying in the building and renovating?<\/p>\n Burton, perhaps uncontroversially, says that sometimes it\u2019s more important what happens in a building than what kind of a building it is. That\u2019s certainly true looking back at much of the ICA\u2019s history, before it even had its own stand-alone building. <\/p>\n Andy Warhol\u2019s first museum show was there in 1965. David Smith, Christo, and Clyfford Still had a presence at the ICA in the 1960s, and in the 1970s, it hosted shows by Agnes Martin and Cy Twombly. Laurie Anderson was here, as was, in the mid-1980s, photographer Cindy Sherman.<\/p>\n Its success in impressing viewers as cutting edge has varied over the years.<\/p>\n Inquirer art critic Edward J. Sozanski<\/a>, writing in 1998, said that since the Mapplethorpe affair, \u201cthe organization appears to have lost some of its zest and ability to recognize current issues.\u201d <\/p>\n