The rear is not an entrance

Nothing less than a miracle allowed me to leave before 7pm today.

The meeting was long and it wouldn’t end and suddenly in the middle of typing, my boss says aloud “we work too hard…” Fearing that it’s a trick question, I kept quiet, pounding away at my laptop, hoping that he finishes his comment so that we know he’s not being sarcastic or ironic.

Strangely, he folds his laptop and says “okie, it’s Thursday and it’s coming to 6.30pm, let’s leave the rest to tomorrow” and he leaves the room. Talk about an exit… I was left wondering what got into him today, I better get more of that for the days ahead.

Thankfully, I was already contemplating going to the new Institute of Contemporary Art down at South Boston today (thanks Target for Free Thursdays!). I heard so many things about the new building (sadly mostly negative comments) and was curious to see what was so wrong about it. New York Times had a kinder review but many other critics were much less kind – “back facing front”, “illogical layout”, “creative but wasteful use of space” etc etc.

But I went with an open mind, preparing to like the building, from the photos the ICA looked pretty nice no?

But walking into the ICA, I instantly knew what the critics meant. The front door was next to a loading dock, and you couldn’t really enter in the front, you have to walk around it to the side entrance… but that’s really the main entrance. While the huge elevator was cool (wooden panels and glass walls), there wasn’t much to the museum except for two galleries and even then the galleries were not big spaces. We finished walking around the galleries in 45 mins and walked around to see if there were other displays.

None.

That’s it.

Except the really gorgeous view of the sea from the floor to ceiling glass walls.

But beyond that, there were nothing else except office space. Oh, and a cool gift shop… but I didn’t come to a museum to go shopping. Well at least not this one.

Now I know why most of the ICA photos look like this:

That’s the prettiest you’ll ever see the ICA. Nothing quite like taking it in the rear huh?

The only thing I don’t get is why did they build the ICA so small? There is ALOT of land around the building, heck, even the carpark is bigger than the entire museum’s four storeys laid flat side by side. You build two itsy bitsy galleries and one carpark the size of Africa?

I’ll relegate the ICA to the list of Bostonian incomprehensibles: the roads, the lack of road signs, the constantly frumpy grocery cashiers… one day I’ll understand.