Thursday Nights at the ICA Are Free
Live performances, art, and a radio broadcast on tap tonight
Matthew Ritchie’s painting Remanence in the lobby of the Institute of Contemporary Art, where admission is free each Thursday evening. Photo courtesy of the Institute of Contemporary Art/Geoff Hargadon
If you love modern art but are on a tight budget, you’re in luck. Tonight, and every Thursday night, admission to the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston is free from 5 to 9 p.m. With several diverse exhibitions currently on view as well as work by this year’s winners of the James and Audrey Foster Prize, a biennial competition that recognizes exceptional local artists, viewers will find art in a broad range of media.
The Fontene Demoulas Gallery features the 2015 Foster Prize winners: three individual artists and one collective, Kijidome, an experimental art space in the South End, whose winning artists “explore the theme of limbo.”
The three individual prizewinners are Ricardo De Lima, Vela Phelan, and Sandrine Schaefer. Visual and musical artist De Lima’s sculptural installations in the museum’s gallery are used as platforms for a series of collaborative visual art exhibitions, performance events, and experimental music. Originally from the Dominican Republic, Phelan also works in mixed media, applying ritual and ceremony to ordinary objects. Phelan’s Obscurus Fidem combines a video altar with live performances honoring Mexican folk legend Jesús Malverde. Finally, Schaefer’s fleeting artwork examines the transience between the invisible and visible.
Other exhibitions currently on display include Matthew Ritchie: Remanence, through the month of June and Meleko Mokgosi’s Democratic Intuition, until August 9. In Remanence, Ritchie explores both the restrictions and the possibilities of different media with an expansive wall painting in the ICA lobby that extends to a bay of windows, accompanied by a sound installation. Notice how the drawing becomes more colorful as it moves closer to the windows.
In contrast, Botswana-born Mokgosi’s Democratic Intuition uses five individual mural paintings to examine Southern Africa’s past and present. Using photos and clippings from his native country, Mokgosi depicts the idea of democracy through everyday subjects like people and animals while incorporating abstractions and white space.
Visitors can also catch local artist Jesse Keminsky hosting the Field Service Radio Show, broadcast each Thursday from the ICA from 4 to 7 p.m., in collaboration with Ricardo De Lima.
The Institute of Contemporary Art, 100 Northern Ave., Boston, is open Tuesday, Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Thursday and Friday from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Admission is $15 for adults, $13 for seniors, $10 for students, and free for children 17 and under, museum members, and on Thursdays from 5 to 9 p.m. Find a list of upcoming ICA exhibitions here. Take any MBTA Green Line trolley to Park Street, transfer to a Red Line inbound train to South Station, then to the Silver Line Waterfront bus.
Michelle Marino can be reached at michelle.g.marino@gmail.com.
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