The ICA’s Jill Medvedow said she and other Boston museum directors are seriously considering new mask mandates, to align with the CDC’s latest recommendation that people wear face coverings indoors in parts of the country with higher potential for the spread of COVID-19 and new strains, like the Delta variant.
She recognized the possibility is an unfortunate one, but said she isn’t expecting they’ll have to close doors like they did in 2020.
“I think that we are all so lucky to live here in Massachusetts with our high vax rates, and the constant shared information and data, so that does build a lot of confidence,” she said.
Medvedow, whose official title is the Ellen Matilda Poss Director of the Institute of Contemporary Art, joined Boston Public Radio Thursday as part of the show’s ongoing series about local businesses reopening from the worst throes of the pandemic.
Glum mask news aside, Medvedow said there’s still plenty for art enthusiasts to be excited about — foremost, that they’re open at all.
“People were just so happy to be back,” she said, looking back on their opening night in late June. She described standing in a crowd of people “looking at art in real life, looking at one another, having a sense of collective experience of beauty... and being provoked, being challenged, being educated, being inspired.”
“I think if anyone wondered whether museums matter — we do,” she said.
With the ICA’s reopening also came the return of the ICA Watershed, a renovated former copper pipe factory, opened in 2018, that hosts one artist’s site-specific work each summer. Just across Boston Harbor, the ICA Watershed is accessible via a water shuttle that runs periodically throughout the day. The space itself is free to all.
The Watershed returned with a colossal sculpture by artist Firelei Báez, depicting ancient underwater ruins that incorporates a blend of Carribean history and folklore.
Also available to view is “Figures of Speech,” the ICA’s hotly received exhibit of mixed-media works by Chicago artist Virgil Abloh. Medvedow said she’s been pleased to see its warm reception by a diverse group of visitors, many of whom had never been to the ICA before, and that she's optimistic that many first-timers will return in years to come.
"I think [they] will come back," she said, "as they begin to see that, over and over again, our programs just create so many opportunities for them… to walk in someone else’s shoes, but to see their own shoes — no pun intended with Virgil, ‘cause he’s got a lot of sneakers [on display] — but I think that is what we in the arts can do.”
