Holly Solomon, Andy Warhol and International Velvet at the 1966 Warhol opening preview at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston

Institute of Contemporary Art / BostonSeaport

90 YEARS

Now showing15 October 2026 – 7 March 2027$20

Anniversary show revisiting nine exhibitions and initiatives from the ICA's history, from its 1936 founding as the Boston Museum of Modern Art through thirteen homes and its 1966 Warhol survey.

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On now All of October 2026

You walk in to a giant map of the ICA's thirteen Boston homes, from Harvard's Fogg Museum in 1936 to the Seaport in 2006. Beside it hangs director James Plaut's 1948 statement on why the Institute of Modern Art was renaming itself.

The show revisits nine exhibitions and initiatives in date order. 1941's Modern Mexican Painters is restaged next to archival photos of the same paintings in the ICA's Beacon Hill home. In one small room Warhol's Silver Clouds, helium-filled chrome pillows, drift on ceiling fans, and sometimes out of the room. Thirteen addresses in 90 years means the ICA has moved more often than anyone you know on Boston's September 1st.

In the Globe, Murray Whyte noted it "doesn't try to pack everything in" but builds "an arc with some consistent threads". It's in the Evans and Conway Galleries. Admission is $20, free Thursdays 5 to 9 pm with an advance ticket. On 11 December, "The Inevitable Return: Exploding Plastic Revisited" restages the Warhol and Velvet Underground performance.

Editor's pick

Warhol's Silver Clouds drift on ceiling fans near Kusama's LOVE IS CALLING mirror room. The ICA restages nine of its own past shows in order; the Boston Globe's Murray Whyte found "an arc with some consistent threads".

Look for

Warhol's Silver Clouds, 1966
Helium-filled chrome pillows, a 2026 facsimile of the clouds from the 1966 Warhol survey, drift around a small room on ceiling fans.
Kusama's LOVE IS CALLING
The 2013 Infinity Mirror Room, with inflatable sculptures repeated in endless reflections.
Jenny Holzer's Inflammatory Wall
Texts on power and social control, made 1979 to 1982, shown from the ICA's CURRENTS series.
The map of thirteen former homes
A giant map in the entry gallery pins every ICA address, from Soldiers Field Road in Brighton to the Fenway and the Seaport.
Glenn Ligon's neon text works
Site-specific neon pieces in the John Hancock Founders Gallery, overlooking Boston Harbor.