Pell-Mell on Pall Mall

For 20 years, the most modern museum in London has been a scruffy, nondescript gallery in a walkup off Piccadilly. Nonetheless, from its attic offices the Institute of Contemporary Arts has launched most of the exhibitions and manifestoes that have made Britain once again a force to be reckoned with in the arts. Leader of the small founding group was Sir Roland Penrose, now 67, a minor surrealist painter in his own right and longtime friend of Critic Sir Herbert Read and Sculptor Henry Moore. Under Penrose, ICA pioneered in giving major shows to artists from abroad, including Picasso, Max Ernst, Le Corbusier and Dubuffet. For artists at home, it served as both sounding board and workshop, provided a setting for painters as dissimilar as Francis Bacon and Ben Nicholson. In the '50s, it presided over the birth of British pop art.

Last week ICA turned its back on its threadbare past, moved into new quarters in London's Pall Mall, not far from Buckingham Palace and only a few moments' trek from Trafalgar Square. Not that ICA has any intention of changing its way-out ways. Says Sir Roland Penrose, who has chaired the institute since its founding: "Painter, musician, poet, sculptor, actor, playwright, film director are all looking for ways of jumping into their neighbors' shoes--or at least running three-legged races with them. The new ICA gallery will encourage these trends."

Beatles Linlc-Up. Actually, three-legged races have been a common occurrence at the ICA for some time. Its first manifesto laid claim to everything contemporary from sculpture and painting to music, theater, poetry and films. To further the love-in between the arts, the ICA picked as its new director Michael Kustow, 28, a bearded, bumptious young iconoclast whose background has been not in art but as a jack of all trades for the Royal Shakespeare Company. His aim, says Kustow, will be to put on not only exhibitions "but a new kind of show." Actually, he adds, "I think of this place as much more a television studio than a gallery." He has already drawn up a pell-mell schedule calling for experimental films and plays, a production of Fire by New York's Bread and Puppet Theater, as well as exhibitions of cybernetic and advertising art.

If Kustow has his way, the ICA may soon be rocking to the rhythms of pop music. Plans are currently under way to link up with the Beatles' merchandising company, Apple, which would provide financial help to the ICA. In exchange, the ICA would develop shows to be launched at the Mall headquarters, later toured through the Beatles' projected chain of Sgt. Pepper Clubs. "Maybe in this way," Kustow says, "we can break out from being completely dependent on those two old-fashioned kinds of patronage: the private individuals and the government or foundation money givers."

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