Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit to open 4 ambitious new exhibitions

Duante Beddingfield, Detroit Free Press
Updated ·2 min read

The Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD) will debut four new exhibitions Friday, Sept. 29, including three solo shows and one celebrating MOCAD’s history as it approaches its 17th anniversary:

Artist Mark Thomas Gibson's "Whirly Gig", 2022
Artist Mark Thomas Gibson's "Whirly Gig", 2022

  • Multidisciplinary artist Mark Thomas Gibson’s first solo museum show, “A Retelling,” explores race in proximity to American culture and identity through a humorous lens.

  • Kevin Bernard Moultrie Daye’s “shadowworking” reimagines how Black communities monumentalize intangible heritage and ancestry, creating a new kind of folk art.

  • Kesiena Wanogho’s “Transcendence” is an immersive experience that guides viewers from the Deep South to the “North Star” of Detroit — the final stop on the Underground Railroad.

  • The historical exhibition, “MOCAD: Doors Open,” looks back at the museum’s rich and varied exhibition history and commitment to expanding the field of contemporary art.

“The three solo exhibitions that we have are headlined by Black artists,” said MOCAD Artistic Director Jova Lynne.

“I’m really trying to build seasons where the stories coalesce and echo in a sort of call-and-response with each other, and these four exhibitions really felt like that call and response. I’m aiming to continue making us really cohesive with our programming. This is on the heels of last season, which featured women artists, so it’s exciting to have that curatorial throughline again.”

Doors for the premiere open at 4:30 p.m. Friday, with an artist talk and performances from 5:30 to 10:30 p.m.

“Mark Thomas Gibson is a great friend and colleague of (artist) Mario Moore,” Lynne said, “and they’re going to be in conversation on Friday at 5:30. I think that’s going to be a great conversation. Mark is in a work that Mario has in the Detroit Institute of Arts, and Mario’s in Mark’s work, so it’ll be a vibration of Detroit outward in terms of how artists tell stories.

“I just want to reiterate that we are free and open to the public. I want people to know that they’re always welcome to come to MOCAD.”

Contact Free Press arts and culture reporter Duante Beddingfield at dbeddingfield@freepress.com.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit to open 4 ambitious new exhibitions