Institute of Contemporary Art

Went with my friend on MLK Jr. Day and it was so nice. It was quite a bit of ppl out, but still a great time. I love that most of the exhibits had Caribbean origins.

This is a super small museum. It might be good if you are new to museums or don’t often like them that much (that has been me for a while), but it’s not necessarily the best if you want detailed descriptions of the work. It’s mostly left to interpretation and again it’s 1 floor, so if you want to be free and float around a museum, this might not be the one. I went on MLK day when they had free admission and it was definitely worth it.

I really enjoyed this place, not just because of the art (contemporary art can sometimes be difficult to appreciate and connect with), but also because of the institute's shop and wine/coffee bar. The shop has a fantastic collection of items that you'll immediately want to buy - funny books, art albums, original jewelry, and interesting and meaningful pictures and decorations. I spent an entire hour exploring everything they had to offer and ended up buying some things too. As for the cafe, it offers a fantastic view of the harbor where you can enjoy a glass of Californian Chardonnay while contemplating the sunset. It's a truly wonderful place that is a must-see.

So upon coming on Thursday , at 5pm - 9pm tickets are free. I enjoyed walking around the exhibit. Lots of amazing artworks. 10/10 will come again.

IcA offers free membership for the littles 5-17 years + 1 accompanying them… this is worth it because paying for tickets at this place is not worth it.
There is only one floor of gallery space. They do keep changing it up, so you won’t see the same thing if you go every few months.
Right now they have some Caribbean art which was good, and some Asian artists…

We were there for a workshop on the ground floor, by Lily Xie. It was a stop motion workshop, but the time for the workshop was so less, by the time they taught us what’s needed to know, it was hurry hurry hurry to pack up because they had to set up for the next workshop (which was a drop in from 12-5 pm) we rushed thru our stop motion videos which wasn’t fun. They said we’d have enough time to make our videos or if we wanted we could take our materials home to make a better video…

They had a light puppet workshop after where you could make shadow puppets.

The view of the harbor from the galleries are nice.
The galleries themselves could use some improvement. Some art pieces in the middle of the room have their write ups in random places, and it’s not easy to locate them especially if there is more than 1-3 artwork on the wall; with random art names, and no description for what we are looking at.
I struggled with 2-3 of them before giving up.
And the write ups themselves are very less, doesn’t give a glimpse into what the artist was thinking, why they did what they did, or what we are walking into (if it’s a room art) maybe they want us to do an audio tour, but it’s not clear when you enter where to get the info… a whole lot of employees but looks like they are all there to just protect the art but not really educate the patrons about what we are looking at. (They chided us for having an empty crushed water bottle when we asked them a question about some art) 🤷‍♀️ overall didn’t feel the vibe at this museum

It was nice to have lockers to stash our stuff at the entrance, felt light without our jackets and bags.

Your local library may have free or discounted passes to go here, I don’t think it’s worth it to buy a ticket for this…

The animation workshop was fun, but it was badly organized, if it wasn’t cheap ($5 a ticket) and the free admission for kids, I wouldn’t be back here.