Inside the ICA Watershed in East Boston, which will open to the public July 4.

The ribbon-cutting on June 22 at the ICA Watershed, with ICA Director Jill Medvedow in the center, next to Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh.

A scene from Diana Thater’s installation “A Runaway World” (2017), at the ICA Watershed.

Back in 2006, Jill Medvedow, director of the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), moved the museum, then small and little-known beyond Boston, from its Back Bay quarters in a former police station into a glamorous, harbor-facing new outpost on Fan Pier. The elegant, muscular structure and its vibrant exhibitions and programs turned a desolate zone into a destination. Today the ICA stands as a citadel of civic vitality in an area saturated with high-rises and commercial ventures. Its outdoor and indoor spaces host not only visual art but also music, theater, dance and film events, social gatherings and dynamic artmaking programs for teenagers.

Medvedow’s move was bold, and so was the choice of architectural firm: Diller Scofidio + Renfro, for whom the ICA was the first project in the U.S. The resulting building seems sculpted to make the most of its waterfront setting, with its exterior of scaled steps, gallery floors and even its main elevator all providing unparalleled views of the harbor.

Now with its new companion site in East Boston, the ICA Watershed, Medvedow is leading the ICA as a catalyst to enliven and connect both sides of the harbor through immersive encounters with the art and issues of our time, social experiences and community-based education.

Opening to the public on July 4, the Watershed will welcome visitors from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily except Tuesday, and admission is free. Until Columbus Day, when the Watershed closes for the season, Boston Harbor Cruises will run an eight-minute ferry ride between the two sites from a dock next to the ICA. Museum members and ticket holders ride free, and so do visitors age 17 and under.

Adding to Eastie’s vibrancy

Medvedow was a pioneer in bringing a vibrant cultural and civic center into the Seaport District. Now, in East Boston, the ICA brings new strengths into a community that already enjoys a rich civic life. Evidence of such vitality is visible as soon as visitors exit the ferry, which docks in lovely Piers Park, a wide swath of grass and trees overlooking the harbor. Along the street that leads to the Watershed are burgeoning community gardens and above them, artfully renovated residences.

See WATERSHED, page 23

Watershed

continued from page 15

East Boston is proud of its heritage as a gateway city for immigrants. It was once second only to Ellis Island in the number of people for whom it was an entry point into this country. Home to generations of Italian families, East Boston also has gained a large Spanish-speaking population, and many community services are offered in both Spanish and English.

The ICA Watershed, built out of a former copper pipe and sheet metal factory, stands among the worn warehouses in the Boston Harbor Shipyard and Marina, a working shipyard with a large docking facility and stunning views of the harbor and Boston skyline. Owned since 1985 by the Massachusetts Port Authority, the waterfront land is also host to marine businesses, a cider brewery, the Aussie-style eatery KO Pies and an artist-run nonprofit, HarborArts.

A place with a storied past, the shipyard was a center for shipbuilding during the Civil War and during the 19th century turned out some of the fastest clipper ships in the world. By the 1950s, most manufacturing had ceased. Among the abandoned buildings was the one that the ICA chose to renovate as its East Boston home.

HarborArts has turned the shipyard’s open plaza into an outdoor art gallery. Randi Hopkins, director of visual arts at Boston Center for the Arts, and at the time a curator at the ICA, lent a hand in the project’s startup. Conspicuous among the works on view is a 40-foot sculpture fashioned from recycled metal entitled “Codfish.”

Standing on a rooftop like a giant weathervane, the sculpture was made in 2009 by local artists Roger Baker, Marc Casasanta, Steve Israel (HarborArts founder) and Bill McCormick.

A community endeavor

The process of creating the ICA Watershed was far more than a real estate venture. As plans took shape, Medvedow and her staff conducted vigorous outreach in East Boston and began building collaborative partnerships with local schools and nonprofits of all kinds, including health clinics, social service agencies and arts organizations. First among the ICA Watershed’s programs will be projects that engage East Boston teenagers in artmaking here and at the Fan Pier museum.

Last Friday’s ribbon-cutting ceremony at the ICA Watershed was a scene of great good will, bringing together representatives from these organizations as well as elected officials, including Mayor of Boston Martin J. Walsh, and Thomas P. Glynn, CEO of Massport, which leased the formerly condemned property to the ICA.

Anmahian Winton Architects of Cambridge designed the facility, turning the dilapidated factory into a 15,000-square-foot cultural and community space. Stack + Co. of South Boston executed the design — a ground-up, gut renovation.

Grand scale

Stealing the scene from the ribbon-cutting was the dramatic opening of the Watershed’s industrial-scale hangar door, which rises and folds in on itself like a giant clamshell.

Outside, the building is coated in translucent ivory polycarbonate. Inside, the Watershed’s immense, warehouse-size spaces preserve elements of the facility’s industrial past, such as cinderblock walls and massive steel chains. Its new roof features a 250-foot long skylight that runs like a spine through the building. The wall-size hangar doors in the front and rear can open the facility to both the lively shipyard plaza and a back patio that overlooks the harbor.

Greeting visitors as they enter is a wall display showing the five islands that in 1833 were forged together to form East Boston. On view in an education gallery is a video of local residents telling their stories, as well as images of East Boston by participants in the ICA’s teen digital photography program. Signage throughout the Watershed is in both Spanish and English.

Each season, the Watershed will showcase a major artist. Organized by Eva Respini, ICA’s Barbara Lee chief curator, the Watershed’s inaugural exhibition presents immersive, multi-projector installations by pioneering video artist Diana Thater. Capitalizing on the vast, raw space, Thater’s works inventively disorient viewers and blur the conventional boundaries of a gallery.

“Delphine” (1999) shows a pod of dolphins swimming in the Caribbean in videos that cover the walls and floors, luring visitors into imagining that they too are underwater. “A Runaway World” (2017), filmed in Kenya, draws viewers into empathy-inducing close-ups of bull elephants, a species on the verge of extinction, as they gather around their watering hole. These works and others create a sense of immediacy between viewers and wildlife threatened by human excesses.

Both inside the Watershed and in its setting, visitors will find abundant delights — and all this comes with a ride across the Boston Harbor.

ON THE WEB

For more information about ICA Watershed, visit: www.icaboston.org/ica-watershed