ICA San Francisco Expands to Financial District’s Cube, Doubling Exhibition Space

The Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco (ICA SF) is relocating from its original Dogpatch neighborhood warehouse to a larger five-story modernist building known locally as “the Cube” in the city’s financial district.

The move, scheduled for October 25, comes just two years after the ICA SF opened its doors and will significantly expand the museum’s exhibition space from 11,000 square feet to 26,000 square feet.

Thanks to an agreement with Vornado Realty Trust, which owns the “Cube,” the ICA’s operational costs will be slashed: while the non-profit institution still has to pay for security and day-to-day maintenance, they won’t have to sign a lease or pay rent or utilities for 18 months.

“Every non-profit Arts organization is looking for the most sustainable financial model. This partnership with Vornado will help the ICA’s mission of providing a space for artists to realize something that is not necessarily what they would do for a gallery show or what they would do a larger institution,” Alison Gass, the museum’s founding director, told ARTnews. 

Gass described the building as “almost like a Venice Biennale-style exhibition experience in the middle of the heart of San Francisco.”

The museum will remain at its current location through the end of its current exhibition, Guyana-born artist Suchitra Mattai’s “she walked in reverse and found their songs,” on September 15. The first exhibition slated for “the Cube” will be organized by independent curator Larry Ossei-Mensah.

The museum, which offers free admission and keeps no permanent collection, has a reputation for showcasing both Bay Area-based and internationally renowned artists.

The institution’s maiden exhibition in 2022 saw Jeffery Gibson, who is representing the US at the 60th Venice Biennale this year, present a project with no studio-made objects. Instead he created a massive video installation and excavated holes in the floor as “an opportunity for the earth to breathe and serve as a portal for us to speak, give thanks, and apologize to the land for our treatment of ‘them.’”