Boston MA 02210
United States
Stanley Whitney: How High the Moon
April 17–September 1, 2025
The long-awaited first survey of artist Stanley Whitney's work features extensive installations of the artist's improvisatory paintings; his drawings and prints; and a chronological selection of the artist’s sketchbooks spanning from 1987 to 2021. His work is contextualized through the artist’s diverse sources of inspiration, which include music, poetry, American quilts, and a global history of art and architecture. Whitney’s powerful, color-saturated abstractions invite visitors to explore personal responses to color, to mentally wander, and to gather strength for whatever lies ahead. Stanley Whitney: How High the Moon is organized by the Buffalo AKG Art Museum. The exhibition is curated by Cathleen Chaffee, Charles Balbach Chief Curator, Buffalo AKG Art Museum. The ICA/Boston’s presentation is organized by Ruth Erickson, Barbara Lee Chief Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs, with Tessa Bachi Haas, Assistant Curator.
Christian Marclay: Doors
April 17–September 1, 2025
The ICA presents the U.S. premiere of Doors, a captivating single-channel video collage that stiches together hundreds of short film clips depicting movement in, out, and through doors. The highly anticipated work draws from nearly all genres of narrative cinema ranging from French New Wave to Hollywood blockbusters. A carefully constructed visual and auditory narrative runs on a continuous loop and follows actors into new spaces. Each door marks an edited transition between films and immerses visitors into what the artist describes as “an architecture in which to get lost.” Christian Marclay: Doors is organized by Tessa Bachi Haas, Assistant Curator.
Chiharu Shiota: Home Less Home
May 22–September 1, 2025
Berlin-based Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota foregrounds stories of migration, home, connection, memory, and consciousness in her awe-inspiring installations. Using line in the form of string, Shiota creates immersive installations that underscore human connection and experience. Featured as part of the Boston Public Art Triennial 2025, this exhibition will present two signature, large-scale installations at the ICA Watershed that consider the ways humans collect memories and form connections as they move and travel. Chiharu Shiota: Home Less Home is organized by Ruth Erickson, Barbara Lee Chief Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs, with Brianne Chapelle, Curatorial Department Coordinator.
2025 James and Audrey Foster Prize
August 25, 2025–January 19, 2026
The ICA presents the 2025 James and Audrey Foster Prize recipients: Alison Croney Moses, Damien Hoar de Galvan, Sneha Shrestha (aka Imagine), and Yorgos Efthymiadis. This extraordinary group of Boston-area artists work across media, showcasing bodies of work that include large-scale murals, laminated wooden sculptures, artist-designed seating, and poignant portrait photography. Each artist considers their local and global roots as essential to their practices, reflecting the diversity in Boston’s art landscape today. The 2025 James and Audrey Foster Prize is organized by Tessa Bachi Haas, Assistant Curator.
Portia Zvavahera
August 25, 2025–January 19, 2026
For her first solo U.S. museum exhibition, Portia Zvavahera draws from dreams to create fantastical paintings that evoke moments of transition and transcendence. Merging painting and printmaking techniques with motifs and patterns from Zimbabwean textile designs, Zvavahera creates vibrant and layered compositions. Her figures commune with spirits, animals, and angels; protective comforts and nightmares collide in otherworldly, stirring unions. For the ICA, Zvavahera is presenting a selection of recent paintings centered on the theme of animals, considering how they populate her work and the collective imagination. Portia Zvavahera is organized by Ruth Erickson, Barbara Lee Chief Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs, with Meghan Clare Considine, Curatorial Assistant.
An Indigenous Present
October 9, 2025–March 8, 2026
An Indigenous Present surveys multiple strategies of abstraction in the work of fifteen artists. Spanning a century of artistic practice, the exhibition focuses on the ways that artists utilize abstraction to represent personal and cultural narratives, describe specific and imagined places, and build upon cultural traditions. The included works enlarge art histories and show abstraction to be an approach with many forms and histories—the impulse toward abstraction contains multitudes. The exhibition is co-curated by artist Jeffrey Gibson and independent curator Jenelle Porter, emerging from their 2023 book of the same title which celebrated an expanding field of contemporary Indigenous and Native art.
