Representatives for The Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco (ICA SF) have announced an unexpected move. Just two years after its founding, the museum will move from its present location in the city’s Dogpatch neighbourhood to The Cube, a new development in the financial district downtown, near SFMOMA, the Contemporary Jewish Museum and Jessica Silverman Gallery.
The New York Times, which first reported the news, relays that the new site, at 345 Montgomery Street, will provide the fledgling museum with 26,000 sq. ft of exhibition space, more than double the 11,000 sq. ft of its inaugural home. The Cube’s owner, Vornado Realty Trust, has also agreed not to charge the ICA SF either rent or utilities for two years.
“The ICA is about allowing artists to take risks and to try new things,” founding director Alison Gass told The New York Times. She added that the rent at the Dogpatch location had been high—perhaps untenably so for what she called a “start-up museum”.
The move will take place after the ICA SF’s current exhibition of works by the Guyana-born artist Suchitra Mattai ends on 15 September. The museum will reopen at its new address on 25 October with a group exhibition assembled by the highly regarded independent curator Larry Ossei-Mensah. The relocation will coincide with both the museum’s second anniversary and Black Art Week , a celebration of Black visual culture in San Francisco being organised by Monetta White, the executive director and chief executive of the city’s Museum of the African Diaspora.
Glen Weiss, the executive vice president and co-head of real estate at Vornado, said in a statement that his company was “thrilled to partner with” the Institute, whose presence at the Cube will “further enliven and elevate the financial district as a nexus for culture and commerce”.
ICASF chairman Ethan Beard told The New York Times that the museum’s move reflects a willingness “to take advantage of our nimbleness and size to quickly adapt to opportunities”.
“We are trying to build something that is a lasting institution and looking to find a more sustainable financial path”, he added.
