The Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco, a new noncollecting art museum, is set to open in the summer or fall of 2022, with a preview during the FOG Design and Art Fair in January.
The institute will occupy a refurbished 11,000-square-foot 1940 brick building that once housed a paint company. The museum aims to accommodate programming that can respond swiftly to current events; with its high ceilings and airy space, it will also be able to host installations of large or unusual dimensions.
Alison Gass, who has previously helmed the ICA San Jose and the Smart Museum of Art in Chicago, is the director of the fledgling institution, which is being overseen by the Minnesota Street Project Foundation. “We want to keep it really open, expansive, and flexible for artists who aren’t necessarily working at a domestic scale,” she told.
The new institute will focus on contemporary art and will be prioritizing artists and individuals and jettisoning the costs associated with acquiring and maintaining a collection. It will offer free admission.
Inspired in part by last year’s Black Lives Matter protests, the ICA will have a distinct social justice bent, prioritizing underrepresented voices and viewpoints beyond the traditional dominance of white men. It also aims to provide opportunities for Bay Area creatives to help them stay in one of the most expensive metropolitan areas in the country.
Gass told that the ICA SF will present work by new local and international artists with an eye toward working against traditional modes of curating. “Now is the moment, more than ever, for art as a lens on the larger social, political and cultural issues to be prioritized,” she said. “I think more than ever, museums are going to be less kind of formal discussions about our historical sort of artistic progression and much more, ‘Let’s learn with and through contemporary art practice how we can be better global citizens.’”
The ICA grew out of conversations with Gass and venture capitalist Andy Rappaport, who founded the Minnesota Street Project with his wife Deborah Rappaport, about how the art ecosystem in San Francisco could benefit from the addition of a nimble, non-collecting institution.
The Minnesota Street Project Foundation is underwriting construction work and a 15-year lease on the space, and the Rappaports are providing a $1 million seed investment for the museum through their Rappaport Family Foundation.
Other donors were also quick to come on board, and it took just two weeks to match that initial $1 million gift. In just eight weeks, Gass has raised closed to $3 million, in large part from “powerful tech art collectors” such as Mike Krieger, co-founder of Instagram, and his wife, Kaitlyn Trigger; and Cal Henderson, cofounder of Slack, and his wife, Rebecca Henderson.
The Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco will be located at 901 Minnesota Street, San Francisco, California.