$10 Million Gift: Elevating ICA’s Artist-Centered Vision	Print Issue
,

Amy Sadao, Daniel W. Dietrich, II Director of the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) at the University of Pennsylvania, announced a monumental gift of $10 million for ICA’s curatorial program, given by Daniel W. Dietrich, II. The largest gift in the museum’s history nearly doubles ICA’s endowment. This transformational gift supports ICA’s artist-centered mission and guarantees multi-year curatorial research and exhibition development opportunities, which will preserve and strengthen the generative relationship between the museum, curators and artists that is at ICA’s core.

For more than 50 years, ICA has been a world-leading contemporary art museum committed to supporting the work of emerging and under-recognized artists. This significant gift will further strengthen ICA’s profile and reputation as an artist-centered institute by providing curators with resources for significant research, time to develop relationships with artists and their work, and an unfettered source of exhibition support. It is crucial to ICA’s mission to seek work that illuminates the contemporary moment and challenges visitors to think in new ways. This endowment allows ICA’s curators and artists wide latitude to engage with what is difficult and daring; to investigate unknown territories, new exhibition strategies, and alternative presentations; and to take invaluable risks.

“It is important for ICA to take risks and probe things that curatorially have not been possible before,” says Mr. Dietrich. “The time aspect of research and building relationships with artists is enormous and the trajectory is as long as it takes. That is the whole purpose, the spirit of this, that sense of exploration out into space for what we don’t know.”

“Penn is deeply grateful to friends like Daniel Dietrich,” said Penn President Amy Gutmann. “His incomparable vision, his steadfast generosity and his wise counsel have benefitted ICA for decades. And now he has once again stepped forward to take a leadership role in bolstering the very foundations of this forward-thinking institution.”

Mr. Dietrich, a stalwart supporter of ICA, is president of the Dietrich Foundation and the Daniel W. Dietrich, II Trust, which principally support higher education and arts institutions in Pennsylvania and New York. Mr. Dietrich has been a board member of ICA since 1969.

While the Dietrich family has deep connections with the University of Pennsylvania, Mr. Dietrich earned an art history degree from Hamilton College in New York and has since devoted himself to supporting artists and arts organizations as a benefactor and friend. The ICA has always been a central focus of his philanthropic interests. In 2005 he helped lead a capital campaign for ICA by endowing the Daniel W. Dietrich, II Director, the position now held by Amy Sadao. Mr. Dietrich has been involved with the planning and construction of visual and performing arts facilities throughout the country.

“With this gift, Dan sets ICA on an exciting new path to greatly expand our program, outreach and the ICA experience. Endowing ICA’s core principles extends the vision he has helped shape for over 45 years,” says Ms. Sadao. “There is no truer or more courageous arts patron than Dan.”

The Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania believes in the power of art and artists to inform and inspire. The ICA is free for all to engage and connect with the art of our time.

For fifty years, ICA has served as a laboratory for the new, introducing and supporting the production of urgent and important contemporary art. ICA’s inaugural show of paintings by abstract expressionist Clyfford Still in 1963, followed by the first museum show of works by Andy Warhol in 1965, established the museum’s reputation for organizing exhibitions of important but under­recognized artists. ICA has been instrumental in identifying and developing many promising artists before they attained prominence within the international art world, some of whom include, in addition to Warhol, Laurie Anderson, Richard Artschwager, Vija Celmins, Karen Kilimnik, Barry Le Va, Glenn Ligon, Robert Mapplethorpe, Agnes Martin, Pepon Osorio, Tavares Strachan and Cy Twombly.

Ms. Sadao continued, “ICA is a place to encounter art that urgently needs to be seen. Our curators seek work that illuminates our contemporary moment; that challenges us to think in new ways. New ideas and free exchange flourish, as they should, at this university art museum. Come to ICA with high expectations – for us and for the work we present, but also for yourself. Engage with what is difficult and daring! A work of art has the power to transform people and, through people, the world. We do our work with this goal: that the art you experience at ICA will change the way you see and think about the world.”