Institute for Contemporary Art, Richmond (ICA), or the Markel Center at the VCU Institute for Contemporary Art is an arts center at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia, USA, proposed for completion in 2017. It will be built by Steven Holl and Associates, selected from 64 competing architectural firms worldwide. Virginia Commonwealth University President Michael Rao, in announcing plans for the ICA in 2011, said that the prominence of the museum's location, "bordering the city's Arts District and in the Broad Street Corridor which links the VCU Monroe Park Campus with VCU's Medical Center" would have symbolic significance.
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The concept and vision
Planned as the city's signature noncollecting contemporary art museum with an international reputation, located at an important crossroads corner location of Belvidere Street and Broad Street, a center location in Richmond's lively art scene, the ICA chose Lisa Freiman as its first Director. The Institute for Contemporary Art (ICA) at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia announced in 2016 the appointment of the ICA's first chief curator, Stephanie Smith, formerly a chief curator of the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto. Lauren Ross was announced as the inaugural curator of the museum in Artnet News. Ross was formerly the curator of modern and contemporary art at the Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where she organized the 2015 debut of the show Nir Evron: Projected Claims, the first museum exhibition for the Israeli artist. Ross brought the Nir Evron exhibition to the Richmond ICA in the museum’s temporary on-campus gallery space.
Architect Holl mentioned that the position and landscape of the museum itself would present "an inviting sense of openness".
Funding the project
Beverly Reynolds, owner of Richmond's Reynolds Gallery, in her last years was a major donor and supporter of the ICA. In an interview Reynolds credited Richard Toscan, Dean of the VCU School of the Arts, with the rise of the school's stature from 25th to first ranking of art schools in U.S. News and World Report. Bill and Pam Royal and Steve and Kathi Markel were leaders of fundraising efforts to build the museum, and Patsy Pettus was a major donor with a gift of one million dollars to fund building the dramatic stairway designed by architect Holl. A videocam has been provided so that fundraisers may observe the building of ICA as it progresses. Artist Tara Donovan, a VCUarts MFA alumna, is an ICA International Advisory Board Member.
Steve Markel of Markel Corporation serves as vice-chairman of the fundraising committee. Other donors announced at the groundbreaking were The Martin Agency and a major anonymous donor.
Construction
The groundbreaking ceremony took place in June 2014, where colorful paint was splashed from fork lifts onto the site, it was announced that the official name of the building will be the Markel Center at the VCU Institute for Contemporary Art.
The new ICA has been called "the most structurally complex building I have ever been associated with" by Richard Sliwoski, head of the VCU Facilities Management Division. By early 2017 VCU's Institute for Contemporary Art became a visible link between the old and the new in Richmond.
The ICA at VCU announced in the Richmond Times-Dispatch that its opening date would be October 28, 2017 and that the first show would be called Declaration.