If the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York is any indication, a move downtown can do big things for a museum’s brand and audience. The International Center of Photography (ICP) is certainly betting on it. The centre, which has been closed for a year and a half, is due to reopen on the Bowery on 23 June in a ground-floor space it bought for $23.5m.
The new venue has roughly the same exhibition space as the museum’s former midtown site (where its photography school will stay until at least 2018). But it offers easier public access in a more art-friendly location. It is across the street from the New Museum (with which it will have joint ticketing) and near the Tenement Museum and dozens of galleries. Charlotte Cotton, the ICP’s curator-in-residence, expects “lots of cross-trafficking”.
Photography has come a long way since Cornell Capa, the brother of the war photographer Robert Capa, founded the ICP in 1974 to bring attention to the kind of socially aware photography often overlooked by museums. The ICP’s inaugural show, Public, Private, Secret (until January 2017), tackles sharing and surveillance in the digital age. The show includes historic works such as early mugshots and the 19th-century abolitionist Sojourner Truth’s carte de visite as well as videos by the contemporary artists Martine Syms and Jon Rafman and photos posted in real time on social media.
