For 20 years, the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit — or MOCAD — has been a home for experimental art, new ideas, and some of the city's most interesting artists. And it's become an important place where local creatives come into conversation with artists from around the world. You'd be just as likely to see something from a Detroit artist like Backpack Durden as artist Kara Walker.
The museum is marking its 20th anniversary with a major exhibition called A Practice of Multiplicity, which has a community opening event this Saturday. The exhibit features work from more than 80 artists and looks back at the people, ideas and communities that have shaped MOCAD for two decades.
Stateside spoke with the co-director and artistic director of MOCAD Jova Lynne about the exhibit and the unique place MOCAD holds in the Detroit art world. An edited excerpt of that conversation is below and you can click on the audio player above to hear the whole conversation.
This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
April Baer: What comes up for you about the evolution of the museum over that time? You have not been at the museum that entire time. But but maybe some thoughts on what's special about it and what's central to its identity?
Jova Lynne: I would say, in institutional life, we’re a toddler, because usually institutions have very, very long, long lives. And I think being a toddler is really amazing because we get to rebel and be a little different, which is inherently a part of the story of MOCAD. So in 1996, an art critic and art writer for the Detroit Free Press named Marsha Miro had this idea where she was like, why don't we have a contemporary art museum in Detroit?
At that time, we had already sort of been living through the legacy of the Cass Corridor Arts movement, which is a movement that's definitely born and bred of Detroit, that sort of is underrepresented in the larger arts field. And we had this great legacy of, alongside that movement, a great movement that doesn't actually really have a name, but I would say a great movement of Detroit artists, specifically a group of Black artists who really rallied together to make sure that Black artists could have not only representation in terms of galleries, but also in terms of artists supporting other artists in their career. So you had all of these artists who were making, making, making and no place to showcase their work.
In Detroit, MOCAD, to this day is the only contemporary art museum. And when I say contemporary art, I mean focusing on artists who are alive or have recently been alive, making work that speaks to the different cultural moments of our time. That includes social political moments. That includes big questions of our futures, as well as sort of reconciling with our past. And so Marsha had this idea, and it took her about 10 years to build the museum. She was working in very close partnership with her other two cofounders, Julia Reyes Taubman, who was a great photographer and philanthropist people mover, as well as Susanne Feld Hilberry, who had one of the more established galleries in the area.
AB: At the same time, one of the things I've been thinking about with 20 years of MOCAD is just how much the city has been going through. Are there particular exhibitions or artists that you feel have contributed to the modern definition of of what MOCAD has to show and reflect back to the city?
JL: Certainly. I mean, I think this show specifically was a really hard one to curate. MOCAD has showcased hundreds and thousands of artists. And so it was really hard, to be honest, to narrow down this artist list and really think about.
I broke the show up into four different parts to speak to the different ways that artists engage with Detroit, but also the legacy of the museum building itself up. And it's kind of a call and response with the history of the city, I would say the history of the state, the history of our world. And so it's interesting to have this museum emerge during a time of such incredible economic uncertainty. And I go back to that sort of rebellious spirit that we know lives within Detroit, the rebellious spirit of artists, and also the possibilities for the future that existed then. And I think something that's really special about MOCAD — because we're kind of an unruly melting pot of different people, places and things — we're able to show works that maybe are a little bit more unconventional.
I think usually when an artist creates, they're known for one specific thing. But one thing I like about MOCAD is when we work with more established artists, we end up showing things that maybe the commercial landscape is less interested in, and that's something I'm really proud of.
I also feel like we have this kind of exchange across generations. So we did a major retrospective of Olayami Dabls’ work. You know, he has a rich legacy of mentorship here in the city. And we have a piece by the artist Bryce Detroit, who certainly has been mentored by him. The late Gilda Snowden, who mentored LaKela Brown, who's also in the show. You know, it's just such a beautiful thing. And Lenny Sinclair, we did a major retrospective of her work called Motor City Underground. We’re reprinting the catalogue for that exhibition. I'm super proud of it. She is in the show too, and it's just this beautiful exchange.
AB: So when we're having this conversation again in 20 years, what would you hope people would say about MOCAD and its impact on Detroit and the broader arts scene globally?
JL: You know, I will say that 20 years from now, I hope that anybody can come into the museum, and not just see themselves in it, but see the potential of community. I think that something that I'm really proud of is our education and community engagement programming, where artists are still at the forefront of the institution and guiding those sort of ideas for how we interpret work.
I think in 20 years, I want to have grown the museum so that you can recognize this from anywhere around the town, anywhere around the state. And I want to continue to be a place that fosters radical ideas because people thought Marsha [Miro] was crazy when she was, like, going around saying, we need contemporary. Everybody said, well, we have the DIA. Why do we need something else? And it's not that we need something else, it's that we need something different. And it's the diversity of ideas and of artwork that makes this city so great.
There's two neon works at MOCAD. There's one by Martin Creed that says “Everything is going to be all right.” That's on the front. And then on the back of the museum, there's a new piece that says “Artists must be able to create at the same scale that society has to destroy.” And I think that for me, MOCAD is that place of duality where everything is going to be all right. And as long as we give artists the tools and access that we need to create, to display, to engage with community, to exhibit, to have hard conversations, then everything really will be all right.
