Between Consensus and Anxiety: Curating Transparency at the ICA of the 1950s

Abstract

This article explores the founding principles of London's Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) through two of its experimental exhibitions, Growth and Form (1951) and an Exhibit (1957). By examining the writings of key individuals in the ICA's early years, such as Lawrence Alloway, Richard Hamilton and Herbert Read, this text considers how methods of curatorial inquiry were defined and developed. The purview of the curatorial, in this case as a practice that makes visible multiple associations through a strategy of transparency, is used to develop an understanding of the ICA as an institution centred on interdisciplinary investigation.