MOCAD reopens with new windows, a new name, and three Detroit shows

The Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit reopens Saturday after an eight-month renovation, and the building looks different from the street. The museum has occupied the same former auto dealership at 4454 Woodward, a structure originally designed by Albert Kahn, for the whole of its run. The renovation, led by Ann Arbor firm PLY+ and architect Craig Borum, cut a stretch of the Woodward facade open and replaced it with oversized windows, so anyone walking past can now see into the galleries.

Inside, the ceiling has been stripped back to show the new HVAC, the building's first full climate-control system. The exposed mechanicals read as a deliberate choice rather than a budget one, in keeping with the industrial look the museum has always leaned on.

The building also has a new name. MOCAD has rededicated it as the Julia Reyes Taubman Building, after the late co-founder, with metal lettering set into the facade. Taubman started the museum alongside Marsha Miro and the late Susanne Feld Hilberry. The idea dates to the mid-1990s; MOCAD opened to the public in 2006.

The renovation is the first phase of a larger plan. The museum raised close to $3 million for this round, including $1.8 million from the Reyes and Taubman families and nearly $1 million from board members and other donors, per coverage in The Art Newspaper and Hour Detroit. The family gift is part of a multi-phase pledge totaling $5 million, and the Knight Foundation has committed $2 million toward the full project.

Three exhibitions open with the building, all by Detroit artists. Olayami Dabls presents Detroit Cosmologies, a career-spanning retrospective. Carole Harris shows This Side of the River, a survey of her work as a Detroit fiber artist. Martha Mysko presents Retail Therapy, her first solo museum show; Mysko co-chairs painting at Cranbrook and builds assemblages from materials gathered around the city.

The interior has been reworked beyond the galleries. The cafe at the front has been rebuilt as the Knight Community Commons, named for the Knight Foundation, and the shop has been moved up front and joined to it. A new Learning Studio occupies a former retail bay, giving a permanent home to the K-12 workshop programming the museum has run for years.

The reopening opens a year of programming under the banner A Practice of Multiplicity, marking the museum's 20th anniversary and built around Detroit artists. Co-directors Jova Lynne, who leads the artistic side, and Marie Madison-Patton, who runs operations, have headed the museum together since 2022. "We want this to be a place where people of all ages can learn about art at different levels," Madison-Patton told The Art Newspaper. Lynne, describing the curatorial approach, told the same outlet the museum is "not concerned about maintaining a single authoritative interpretation."

Mike Kelley's Mobile Homestead, the small standalone building on the museum's lawn, stayed open through the renovation and reopens Saturday with a new installation by Paris-based artist Loris Gréaud titled Cortical*Smoke+Mirrors. Gréaud turns the replica house into a projection device, casting infrared footage he shot inside a shuttered Centre Pompidou during the 2020 lockdown out through its windows. "Detroit has always fascinated me," Gréaud says in the museum's notes for the show. "I see it as a kind of kaleidoscope of potential lives."

A second phase is expected to begin later this year, adding a parking lot, an outdoor music space, and a kitchen.

The museum reopens Saturday, April 25, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., at 4454 Woodward Avenue in Midtown.