Institute of Contemporary Arts

Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), London.
Cultural centre founded by Roland Penrose and Herbert Read in 1947 to encourage new developments in the arts and cater for some of the functions fulfilled by the Museum of Modern Art in New York—organizing exhibitions, lectures, films, and so on. Its original home was in Dover Street, but it moved to Nash House, the Mall, in 1968. Many leading artists have been members of the ICA and it has played an important role in certain developments; for example, in the 1950s it was the cradle of British Pop art (see Independent Group), and in 1969 it was the venue for the first exhibition of Conceptual art in Britain, ‘When Attitudes Become Form’.