‘To My Best Friend’: Where Friendship Meets the ICA

Inside the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, the exhibition “To My Best Friend” honors the relationships the museum has built with various artists over the past 90 years, celebrating friendship and the spirit of innovation. Running from Jan. 23 to Dec. 31, museum guests are invited to witness the evolution of contemporary art that has been supported, promised, or gifted to the museum by patrons Fotene Demoulas and Tom Coté.

The two longtime friends have committed to shaping the permanent collection of the ICA — which was established in 2006 — coming together in their shared belief in the power of art to build community and expand visibility for diverse voices.

Visitors can move between twenty installations, photographs, and layered mixed-media works made by 17 female artists. This growing archive highlights women and artists of color, reflecting an inclusive approach from curator Erika Umali that emphasizes long-term collaboration and underrepresented voices.

“I think it speaks volumes about this museum that they care, not just to show their work off, but to invest in the careers of these artists,” said Megan M. Odell, a graduate student lecturer at the ICA and master’s student in history at UMass Boston, in an interview with The Crimson. “These are all women that they have formed relationships with over the last twenty years, through multiple exhibitions and partnerships, and I think that’s cool. You don’t always see that.”

For Odell, emphasizing the unique challenges faced by women of color in the art world, as well as the inspiration drawn from artists who persevere despite the barriers, is of utmost importance. This emphasis on continuity and empowerment extends beyond the artists themselves to the viewer experience.

For some visitors, the museum is an unusually open space for contemporary art, where interpretation feels open-ended and limitless.

“It’s more fun, more interesting sometimes. You got weird, fun patterns” said museum visitor Molly R. Shopper in an interview with The Crimson.

The ICA itself shapes how museum goers engage with contemporary work. Museum visitor Evan S. Weinberg has been visiting the museum for more than a decade and views it as a space defined by curiosity.

“The ICA is my favorite museum in the Boston area because almost all the art exhibits are kind of cool,” said Weinberg in an interview with The Crimson. “You get to walk around. It doesn’t feel overly serious, you get to just wander and enjoy whatever they have.”

Weinberg pointed to the exhibition’s evolving structure, noting that the ICA’s decision to build and showcase its own collection gives returning visitors a sense of familiarity.

This sense of recognition echoes throughout the exhibit and presents itself through works like contemporary artist Sarah Sze’s “Surround Sound (After Studio),” a densely layered installation that reconstructs the chaos of a working studio. The work is brought together with printed photographs, Post-it notes, reflective elements, and suspended materials.

The ICA provides a setting where such intricate, layered works can be fully displayed.

“[Sze] does a lot of constructions, like three-dimensional, that come out of the wall and it’s sort of a combination of found objects and string and wire,” said museum visitor Robert L. Thurer — Harvard Medical School ‘70 — in an interview with The Crimson.

The exhibition takes its title from multimedia artist Lorna Simpson’s installation “To My Best Friend,” which incorporates 85 framed black-and-white photo booth portraits she found from around the country from 1925 to 1960 to examine authorship, memory, and representation of race.

The exhibition frames the ICA’s collection of permanent works as a living record shaped through long-term relationships between artists, supporters, and the institution itself.