ICA: Programs and Events

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Upcoming Programs and Events

All events are held at ICA and are free of charge, unless otherwise noted.

ICA is closed for installation
wed jan 14

ICA is currently closed for installation through January 14, 2009. We will re-open on Thursday evening, January 15th for our winter opening reception. Please join us from 6-8pm. This event is free and open to the public

Winter Opening Reception
thu jan 15 @ 6-8pm

Please join us for the opening of three new exhibitions this evening from 6-8pm. "Dirt on Delight: Impulses That Form Clay," "Joshua Mosley" and "Touch Sensitive: Anthony Campuzano." ICA Members please arrive at 5pm for a walkthrough with the artists and curators!

FREE and open to the public

Whenever Wednesday: Event
wed jan 21 @ 6:30pm

Little Notes Concerning The Forming of A Vase
Organized by artist Jane Irish

Taking a pragmatic yet playfully conceptual approach to craft, artist Jane Irish brings together visiting and local sculptors, scholars, ceramicists, and painters to demonstrate how to make a china vase, step by step: from coming up with a good idea to arranging flowers in the fired, glazed result.

Free to members, $5 general admission

Whenever Wednesday: Coffee Talk
wed jan 28 @ 5:30pm

Susan Fang on Anthony Campuzano with Jeffrey Green, Assistant Professor of Political Science.
Susan Fang, an MFA candidate in the University of Pennsylvania School of Design, explores the sources and methods of Anthony Campuzano’s “abstract journalism.”

COFFEE TALK is a new program featuring a 30-minute tour of the current exhibitions led by a Penn graduate lecturer, followed by coffee on the mezzanine with a faculty member or graduate student generating and moderating an interdisciplinary conversation about ICA’s exhibitions. Susan Fang focuses on the construction of identity in a contemporary hyperactive society; her work is strongly influenced by comics, cartoons, and material and consumer culture.
A Spiegel Fund event.

First Saturday Tour
sat feb 7 @ 2pm

Lectures On Contemporary Art: Yael Rice on Odili Donald Odita.

Now in its sixth year, ICA’s Lectures on Contemporary Art program welcomes back Yael Rice, a Ph.D. candidate from Penn’s Department of the History of Art, to present tours at the museum. Rice joins current program participants Marc Blumthal and Susan Fang, MFA candidates in the University of Pennsylvania School of Design, and Ruth Erickson, also a Ph.D. candidate from Penn’s Department of the History of Art.

Imperfect Moments:Mapplethorpe Symposium
thu feb 12 @ 5:30pm

Self Portrait, 1988 ©Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. Used by permission.

Imperfect Moments: Mapplethorpe and Censorship 20 Years Later, February 12 & 13

Co-presented by the Institute of Contemporary Art and the Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative at The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, this two-day symposium commemorating the 20th anniversary of Mapplethorpe’s exhibition brings together world-renowned artists, critics, and scholars to examine the legacy of the culture wars of the 1990s on the arts in the United States, as well as the issues that artists and art institutions face today.

Thursday, February 12
Meyerson Hall B1, 201 South 34th Street
5:30pm
1989: The Perfect Moment, Judith Tannenbaum
Keynote: Mapplethorpe’s Beauty, David Joselit
Performance: Patti Smith

Friday, February 13
Annenberg School Room 110, 3620 Walnut Street
9:45am Introduction, Claudia Gould and Paula Marincola
10am 1989: Battleground Year, Michael Brenson
10:30am Panel: Artists + Freedom
Moderator: Richard Meyer
Panelists: Karen Finley, Joseph Kosuth, Andres Serrano
2pm Panel: Institutions + Courage
Moderator: Robert Storr
Panelists: Michael Brenson, Sheldon Hackney, Kathy Halbreich

Please arrive early as as there are no ticketed reservations. First come first served. Please check website for updates and a list of scheduled panels and discussions.

Whenever Wednesday: Event: Melody, Melody and Meg
wed feb 18 @ 6:30pm

Screening and Reception: Melody / 6:30pm
Join Alex Campuzano over wine and cheese to watch Serge Gainsbourg seduce nymphet Jane Birkin in Melody (1971), Jean-Christophe Averty’s kaleidoscopic 28-minute video accompaniment to Gainsbourg’s iconic and provocative concept album Histoire de Melody Nelson.

Tour: "Touch Sensitive" / 7pm
with artist Anthony Campuzano and curator Kathryn Kraczon
Curatorial Assistant Kate Kraczon will discuss the choreography behind the cacophony in Anthony Campuzano’s omnivorous text-based works.

Photo: Aaron Igler

Film/Performance: Melody and Meg Baird / 8pm
Internaitonal House, 3701 Chestnut Street
In striking contrast to Averty’s dark, trippy Melody, Waris Hussein’s charming feature from the same year spins an ingenuous tale of pre-pubescent romance, told from the children’s point of view. With a sound track by the Bee Gees. The film is followed by Philadelphia’s own Meg Baird, a founding member of the folk band Espers. Baird draws on Appalachian mountain music, contemporary outsider folk, and traditional ballads in her acoustic sets of covers and originals.

Whenever Wednesday: Coffee Talk
wed feb 25 @ 5:30pm

Ruth Erickson on Joshua Mosley with Jayne Pilling, Carl Visiting Professor in Animation Studies.
A tour of Joshua Mosley’s enigmatic installation "dread," led by Ruth Erickson, a Ph.D. candidate from Penn’s Department of the History of Art, followed by coffee and conversation moderated by Jayne Pilling, Carl Visiting Professor in Animation Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

COFFEE TALK is a new program featuring a 30-minute tour of the current exhibitions led by a Penn graduate lecturer, followed by coffee on the mezzanine with a faculty member or graduate student generating and moderating an interdisciplinary conversation about ICA’s exhibitions. A Spiegel Fund event.

Whenever Wednesday: Conversation
wed mar 4 @ 6:30pm

Betty Woodman and Helen W. Drutt English

Betty Woodman is internationally recognized as one of the most important ceramic artists working today. Her idiosyncratic use of color and eclectic forms express a masterful layering of the painterly and the sculptural, the symbolic and the actual, the pure and the pragmatic. Woodman reflects on the trajectory of contemporary art and craft with the world-renowned craft expert, scholar, and advocate Helen W. Drutt English, Executive Director and Co-founder of the Philadelphia Council of Professional Craftsmen and Founding Director of the Helen Drutt Gallery.
A Spiegel Fund event.

First Saturday Tour
sat mar 7 @ 2pm

Lectures On Contemporary Art: Marc Blumthal on "Dirt on Delight"

Now in its sixth year, ICA’s Lectures on Contemporary Art program welcomes Marc Blumthal , an MFA candidate in the University of Pennsylvania School of Design, to present tours at the museum. Marc Blumthal’s geometric abstract paintings and prints investigate one's travels within the urban landscape, specifically looking at how light defines space. Blumthal joins current program participants Susan Fang, also an MFA candidate in the University of Pennsylvania School of Design, Ruth Erickson and Yael Rice, both Ph.D. candidates from Penn’s Department of the History of Art.

Whenever Wednesday: Conversation
wed mar 18 @ 6:30pm

Joshua Mosley and Elisabeth Camp

Joshua Mosley, who explores the limits of human expression and existential thought in his acclaimed installation "dread," talks with Elisabeth Camp, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania, about metaphor and the role of thought in perception, communication, and self-understanding.
A Spiegel Fund event

Whenever Wednesday: Conversation
wed mar 25 @ 6:30pm

Kathy Butterly and Garth Clark

Art dealer, author, curator, and ceramics expert Garth Clark joins Kathy Butterly in the “Dirt on Delight” galleries, to discuss her whimsical, richly ornamented clay vessels, which achieve a level of imagined portraiture, both physical and psychological.
A Spiegel Fund event.

Spring 2009 Benefit
wed may 6 @ 7pm

Save the date! ICA is very pleased to honor Chair of the ICA Board Katherine Sachs at this year's spring benefit .

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