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Alison Gass_Institute of Contemporary Art

The ICA San Francisco: a new type of museum

The Institute of Contemporary Art San Fransisco will make art more accessible, says its founding director

The Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) San Francisco is a groundbreaking, non-collecting art museum. It will open in September 2022 in the city’s Dogpatch district. Located in an 11,000 ft-square 1940s former paint company, the institution will be an expansive space, and will also be able to accommodate large installations.

Its director, Alison Gass, previously the director of the Institute of Contemporary Art San Jose and, formerly, of the University of Chicago’s Smart Museum of Art, talked to blooloop about her vision for a museum that will be, effectively, a paradigm shift in and beyond the art space.

Introducing the Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco

Alison Gass ICA

Gass has said previously that ‘museums can do better’. In terms of the inspiration behind the ICA, she says:

“Many of us have been struggling for a long time with thinking about how to make museums, contemporary art museums specifically, feel relevant, responsive to the moment, accessible to the broadest possible audiences, and reflective of the world around us. That has been a struggle for many years. Museums have been slow to change.”

The past two years have, in some measure, brought change:

“Throughout 2020 and 2021 we have seen the pandemic, of course, and the Black Lives Matter movement. Many other issues of inequity, relevance, and resonance have really been laid bare when it comes to museums.

“There was an idea that if one could start a museum born of this moment, where the impetus for change, equity for staff, for artists and responsiveness and nimbleness to the community could be part of its DNA, it would be a really interesting thing to do.”

A non-collecting museum

The Institute of Contemporary Art will be a non-collecting museum. Gass references the Kunsthal in Rotterdam, which has no permanent collection, but a range of temporary exhibits, explaining:

“I’m arguing that the ICA has become the American understanding of a Kunsthal-type institution. Somewhere that can continually commission artists, do exhibitions that speak to the moment, and not be harnessed to a particular narrative.”

Institute of Contemporary Art San Fransisco mission

The ICA project is underwritten by the Minnesota Street Project; the MSP’s work with artists, art non-profits and galleries in San Francisco’s Dogpatch district paid into the ICA concept.

“The Minnesota Street Project was founded about six years ago by two philanthropists, Andy and Deborah Rappaport. This was very much in response to the economic disparity crisis happening in the Bay Area in San Francisco.”

Over the last decades, the tech industry in San Francisco has boomed, increasing the disparity between rich and poor:

“There is incredible wealth and also incredible poverty in San Francisco. It has led to a situation where artists and galleries can’t afford the rent for space. Minnesota Street Project Foundation was founded to create artist studios and gallery spaces that could be rented well below market rate. This is so that artists and contemporary galleries can continue to be present in San Francisco.”

The origins of the Institute of Contemporary Art

ICA logo

Among its other initiatives, Minnesota Street Project Foundation’s Fund for Residencies provides affordable studios to over 40 working artists at its flagship 1240 Minnesota Street.

Gass says:

“It also began to create a bit of a centre for contemporary art in San Francisco. It was Andy and Deborah Rappaport who made the whole idea of a startup museum possible.

“I was calling them initially about a space to do some expansion from the other institution I was working for. Then it became a much bigger conversation about whether San Francisco has room for an addition to the contemporary arts ecosystem – whether a serious non-collecting ICA could be present within this constellation of other things.

“Andy and Deborah have their finger on the pulse of real estate in the Dogpatch neighbourhood in San Francisco. They said, ‘We have a building, we can work on making this happen.’

“That was pretty cool.”

A new model

Deborah Rappaport
Deborah Rappaport

The American museum model is almost entirely reliant on individual giving and private wealth rather than government support. Therefore, funding, Gass explains, was the real test:

“The Rappaports started this with their commitment to taking the lease on the building and handing it over to the Institute of Contemporary Art. They agreed to create a kind of fiscal underwriting so that the ICA could start as a non-profit while it applies for its own 501(c)(3) status.”

The Rappaports also undertook to put in a million dollars of seed funding, if the same amount in match funding could be found.

“We did this really fast,” she says:

“We’ve had this incredible group of supporters from around the Bay Area, mostly, and some from farther away. They really believed in the project. This is a mix of long-time supporters of the arts in San Francisco and some newer philanthropists who are just beginning to think about what it means to support the arts in their city. We are close to three and a half million at this point, which is super exciting.”

The Institute of Contemporary Art will be equitable and socially aware

The aim is to create an equitable, socially aware institution – something that is not easy, Gass says:

“It’s certainly aspirational. It’s all well and good to take my own experiences, with other experiences, and begin to formulate a set of ideals and vision and values. But living up to those will require us to surround ourselves with people who will work to hold us accountable. For instance, the staff we hire, the artists we work with, the donors we take funding from, and the board we put together to govern us.”

Living up to [our ideals, vision and values] will require us to surround ourselves with people who will work to hold the institution accountable

“I am asking everyone who’s coming on board to understand these intentions and values. And also then to continue to push back on me. I’m always available for conversation to hear, ‘Hey, that’s not exactly what you said you were going to do.’

“I’m very hopeful that we can slowly achieve this, though I’m certain we will make miss-steps. That’s the goal.”

It is easy, she says, to begin by being fluid, and for things to become set in stone quite quickly:

“It might be that something, for example, a lot of money, or something that seems like an easy path, falls in your lap; you’d really have to ask yourself: ‘Does this align with what we said we were going to do?’”

Showcasing underrepresented viewpoints

One of the Institute of Contemporary Art’s objectives is to emphasise the vision of under underrepresented viewpoints.

“We have now built a team that will be the starting staff of seven or eight people. It is quite a diverse staff in perspective and experience. Some people, like me, have hardcore museum experience. Whereas some are coming from other industries, community organisations or other non-profits, bringing their expertise to the arts. Some people are coming from a different set of backgrounds. That felt important to me.”

As artists are selected, the focus is on ensuring there is a representative cross-section of human society:

“We want to make sure that each artist is making work that is not just great, but also work that helps us navigate tough issues happening today.”

A diversity of perspective

One key initiative she feels strongly about is paying people above the market rate.

“This is very important,” she explains:

“In the US, and also in the UK to an extent, museum work and arts work has been so underpaid that it has been a bastion of privilege. It has only been accessible to people who can afford to do it. We’re trying to change that.”

Museum work and arts work has been so underpaid that it has been a bastion of privilege. It has only been accessible to people who can afford to do it.

“One other thing we are doing is instead of having a really large full-time curatorial staff, we’re going to have a pretty tiny staff. We will lean heavily into a guest curator and curatorial mentorship model. That means we can continue to bring in a real diversity of perspective.”

The Institute of Contemporary Art and BLM

The Black Lives Matter movement fed into the inspiration behind the ICM.

“The Black Lives Matter movement brought racial injustice and inequities to the forefront in a way that nothing else has. It’s not like it was a surprise that this deeply racist, white supremacist world existed. But BLM brought it, perhaps hopefully, to a place where no one can avoid it.”

“It is not the kind of thing that anyone can feel comfortable pushing back on, when you say, ‘We must work to be aware of our own unconscious biases. We must look at the paths of privilege that have led to success for some people, and not for others.’

“I think it changed a lot of people’s minds about how seriously to push an anti-racist, pro-justice practice in museums.”

Collaboration

Collaborating across the arts will be, Gass feels, critical:

“We are just at the beginning phase of that. As we’re putting partnerships together, I’m hopeful that one thing the ICA will bring to the Bay Area specifically is this possibility of modelling a generous institution.

Alison Gass ICA

“We’re looking at creating pools for ourselves so that we can create partnerships where we bring money to the table and allow other nonprofits who haven’t been as successful, perhaps, in fundraising, to bring their ideas to us.”

The Institute of Contemporary Art will open in 2022

The museum will launch with a soft opening in January 2022, before its real opening in September.

“We will do a soft launch, before we finish the interior renovation, with a project called Meantime. This will involve inviting people, artists, activists, performers, and other creatives from around the Bay Area to come to us with ideas.

“We will give them space and funding to inhabit the ICA space for three months, with a series of cycling events. We hope it will help us understand how other people might need space or funding to create meaningful projects in a very expensive city.

“Beyond that, we will look to continue that model in different ways.”

A welcoming space

In terms of the museum model she envisages, Gass explains:

“We are trying to create the ICA as a casual, collaborative, comfortable space. Even our hours will be slightly different; instead of closing every day at five, we’re probably going to do many more after-work hours. We hope that this will become a community gathering space in a real way.

“People can expect to see a real mix of Bay Area and California-based artists with a complement of global rising star practitioners from all over the world.”

Meantime Institute of Contemporary Art SF

Instead of having a main museum store, there will be a series of pop-up shops, following the Meantime model.

She says:

“We’re going to give over the shop space to small business creatives in the Bay Area. People who can’t afford a way to start, but who have a great idea. We’re also hoping to do the same thing with restaurants, chefs and artists.”

Reaching new audiences

In January, the Institute of Contemporary Art will announce the exhibition programme for the first eighteen months to two years.

Being free is critical. The ICM will be free for everyone.

Reaching under-served communities, is, Gass maintains, the ultimate challenge for all museums:

“Being free is critical,” she says. “The ICM will be free for everyone. We’ll be creating positions that are about community partnerships and listening.

“In terms of reaching audiences, our hope is to go out into the community and do a listening tour – not just me, but lots of people, just understanding what a contemporary art museum like this could do that is in service to many different communities, and how we can work to make sure that the ICM does seem relevant and impactful to people for whom the arts, understandably, seem like an extravagant afterthought.”

The digital space

The digital space will be part of this.

“At every revolution, the industrial revolution, the mechanical revolution, now the digital revolution, artists have often been the first to adopt and experiment with those new possibilities. I would say that collectors, critics, museums, have been slower to get on board. Digital is, obviously, the next realm to be examined thoughtfully.”

She adds:

“We are in the bastion of tech entrepreneurship in San Francisco. So it would be silly for us not to be leading the way in examining that.”

Dogpatch san fransisco
Dogpatch, San Francisco. Photo: rosatrieu/Wikipedia Commons.

“We are thinking a lot about how we want to do that. We’re thinking about things like deep dive, digital arts charrette weekends. Events where artists already working in the digital space come and explore that. Certainly, there are many collectors of NFTs [non-fungible tokens] among our funders and around us, so we’re thinking about how we can be part of bringing art criticism and art historical resonance to this much-debated new form of artistic practice.

“We live in a city where a lot of people are deeply involved in cryptocurrency and NFTS. How do you take all of that, as an institution with expertise in contemporary art, and kind of complicate those issues?”

A shift in the art world

Alison Gass_ICA SF

The Institute of Contemporary Art represents a paradigm shift in the art world and – Gass contends – beyond.

How does she see this leading into the future?

She explains:

“As a new institution without a collection that we have to spend a large amount of money preserving, moving and displaying, and since we have built this idea of quick change into our model, my hope is that we will have some freedom that other institutions just don’t have by virtue of the factors which make it hard for museums to change.

“I have spent 21 years working in large institutions. So, the idea of something that can move really quickly and change really quickly in response to what’s happening in the world is a paradigm shift.

“I hope that the ICA will be part of the force of modelling that for other institutions around the world. This, hopefully, will set a stage for institutions thinking about what it means to truly be responsive to the needs of the community.”

Bringing the Institute of Contemporary Art to life

Gass has, she says, so much belief in this vision and its possibilities. Now, it’s just a matter of doing it:

“Every day, it is getting more real, and closer to living the vision. What will be exciting for our audiences is that, as we unfold and begin to do programming and have the staff in place, we will point to those values and to the programme. We will evidence how we’re doing it, instead of just saying, ‘We’re going to do it.’

“I’m excited about that part.”

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Lalla Merlin

Lalla Merlin

Lead features writer Lalla studied English at St. Hugh’s College, Oxford University, and Law with the Open University. A writer, film-maker, and aspiring lawyer, she lives in rural Devon with an assortment of badly behaved animals, including a friendly wolf

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