Leilah Babirye / Cynthia Daignault / 90 YEARS

Leilah Babirye: Embaga ya Naki ne Naki (Wedding of Naki and Naki)
August 27, 2026–January 18, 2027

Leilah Babirye: Embaga ya Naki ne Naki (Wedding of Naki and Naki), the artist’s first solo museum exhibition on the east coast, premieres a new body of work by Babirye (b. 1985 in Kampala, Uganda) in a riveting installation imagined as a queer wedding celebration. Babirye’s sculptures are created through the artist’s deft carving of wood and expressive work with ceramics. She adorns her sculptures with discarded everyday items—transforming bicycle chains into elaborate headdresses, and rubber inner tubes into braided tresses. Babirye reclaims these materials, using technical traditions from western and central Africa to create works that uplift and celebrate LGBTQ identities—an ethos driven by her own experience fleeing Uganda and seeking asylum in New York City after being outed as gay. This exhibition is accompanied by the artist’s first monograph and organized by Ruth Erickson, Barbara Lee Chief Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs at the ICA, with Max Gruber, Curatorial Assistant at the ICA.

Cynthia Daignault: Valley
August 27, 2026–January 18, 2027

The ICA unveils a major new artwork entitled Valley from Baltimore-based artist Cynthia Daignault (b. 1978 in Baltimore). Consisting of dozens of identically-sized, subtly different paintings of an iconic vista in Yosemite National Park in California known popularly as Tunnel View, Valley considers the construction of American identity through notions of the sublime and manifest destiny, contemporary image saturation, and the spiritual nature of a daily painting practice. Daignault’s intimate and episodic paintings are conceived as anti-heroic counterpoints to the iconic, centering on the idea that the American landscape is a witness to history, capturing specific moments with each panel and establishing the cinematic sense of a narrative unfolding over time. Cynthia Daignault: Valley is organized by Jeffrey De Blois, Mannion Family Curator at the ICA, with Meghan Clare Considine, Curatorial Assistant at the ICA. 

90 YEARS
October 15, 2026–March 7, 2027

The ICA celebrates its 90th anniversary by revisiting nine decades of the museum’s groundbreaking exhibitions and initiatives, featuring works by Andy Warhol, Simone Leigh, Yayoi Kusama, and many more. Founded in 1936 as a sister institution to New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the ICA is one of the oldest museums dedicated to contemporary art in the U. S. Throughout its history, the museum has sought to connect its audience with the art and ideas of our time. 90 YEARS is the museum’s first anniversary exhibition—organized by all ICA curators, this exhibition will be on view from October 15, 2026 through March 7, 2027.

90 YEARS will be divided into nine galleries, each one dedicated to a single exhibition or initiative that defined its decade, featuring artworks from past exhibitions alongside newly recovered archival materials, new commissions, and interactive experiences that encourage visitors to immerse themselves in the ICA’s dynamic past and to imagine its vibrant future. Highlights include: the 1941 exhibition Modern Mexican Painters, focusing on the vibrant contemporary painting scene of Mexico, led by artists Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and José Clemente Orozco; the 1966 Andy Warhol survey, which was the iconic pop artist’s second museum exhibition and the premiere of his experimental Exploding Plastic Inevitable; the 2019 presentation of LOVE IS CALLING, one of artist Yayoi Kusama’s signature “infinity mirror rooms,” that brings together inflatable sculptures, immersive sound, dynamic lighting, and audience participation; and Simone Leigh’s historic presentation at the Venice Biennale in 2022, an exhibition commissioned by the ICA in cooperation with the U. S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.

Together, these defining moments—and many other exhibitions, programs, and publications in between—tell the story of an institution continually shaped by artists, audiences, experimentation, and cultural dialogue, and invite audiences to imagine what the museum can become next.