Curator Barbara London is synonymous with new media. She founded the Video-media Exhibition & Collection Programs at MoMA, was among the first to integrate the internet into curatorial practice, and has organized some of the most groundbreaking media art exhibitions of the last 50 years. In the 1970s, few people shared London's interest in video, but one was Nina Castelli Sundell, who after overseeing Castelli-Sonnabend Tapes and Films, became one of ICI’s co-founders.
Sundell and Susan Sollins’s championing of video and new media was a crucial part of ICI’s early years. VIDEOART U.S.A., a touring version of Suzanne Delehanty’s groundbreaking exhibition, was ICI’s first exhibition and premiered at the São Paulo Biennial. ICI exhibitions helped increase the reach of artists like Bruce Nauman, Nam June Paik, Laurie Anderson, and Dara Birnbaum.
In the 2000s and 2010s, ICI built on the work of curators like Barbara London and their expanded interest in new media to explore relationships between sound and visuality. We also marked our 35th anniversary with a celebration of the versatility of video, Project 35, which visited 36 cities and became one of ICI’s most widely-traveled exhibitions.
Barbara London collaborated with ICI as curator of Seeing Sound beginning in 2020. In this reimagining of sound art, each work on view took the form of an environmental sonic experience: Kinetic sculptures, installations, and more revealed how new media opens opportunities to engage with current issues in society.
Today, ICI seeks to keep expanding what new media can do and be, in our exhibitions, programs, and work with our collaborators.