ICA Miami Hires Gensler to Turn a New Building Into a Second Home

The Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami (ICA Miami) has hired the architecture firm Gensler to renovate a 30,000-square-foot building it bought in 2024. The Art Newspaper reported the appointment on 5 November 2026.

The building sits a few steps from the museum's current venue in Miami's Design District, the arts and design neighbourhood of the city. The museum paid US$25 million for it in 2024. Before the sale, the building had housed the De la Cruz Collection, a private art collection.

Once the work is done, the renovation will double ICA Miami's space for exhibitions and public programming. Public programming is the museum's term for talks, events and learning activities open to visitors. The new wing is scheduled to open in late 2027.

The museum plans eight new galleries on the first and second floors. The entire third floor will be given over to public programming. The wing will also hold the first permanent display of ICA Miami's collection, meaning works shown on a long-term basis rather than rotated through temporary shows. The collection has more than 2,000 works.

The project will turn ICA Miami into a multi-site complex, a single museum spread across more than one building. The new building will sit alongside the current venue rather than replace it.

The renovation is part of a US$40 million capital campaign, a fundraising drive for buildings and infrastructure. The campaign is being funded entirely by private money, meaning donations rather than public budgets.

For visitors, the change is mostly about space. Where the museum now has one site, it will have two, and a set of galleries dedicated to its own holdings. For the people who will build it, the job starts with an architecture firm and a construction schedule that runs to late 2027.

The Art Newspaper also reported in 2024 that the building was due to host ICA Miami's educational programming in the months before it closed for renovation.