MOCAD reopens Saturday after eight months of renovation. The 4454 Woodward building, a former auto dealership designed by Albert Kahn, has been the museum's home for the entirety of its 20 years. The renovation, designed by Ann Arbor firm PLY+, swapped out a stretch of the Woodward facade for oversized windows so people walking by can see what's happening inside.
The ceiling has been stripped back to expose the new HVAC, which honestly fits the industrial-shed aesthetic the museum has always traded on. The building has a new name. MOCAD has rededicated the structure as the Julia Reyes Taubman Building, after one of its three co-founders.
Taubman started MOCAD in 2006 with Marsha Miro and the late Susanne Feld Hilberry. The Taubman family foundation has put $5 million into the museum's $14 million capital campaign. Three shows open with the building.
Olayami Dabls's Detroit Cosmologies is a 45-year career retrospective, his first comprehensive museum show. Carole Harris's This Side of the River is a survey of the Detroit fiber artist who had her first solo show at the now-closed Gallery 7 in 1977. Martha Mysko's Retail Therapy is the first solo museum show for the Cranbrook painting co-chair, who builds assemblages from materials picked up around Detroit.
Other changes. The café at the front, formerly The Cube, is now The Knight Community Commons, named for the Knight Foundation. There's a new Learning Studio in a former retail area, formalizing the workshop programming the museum has run with K-12 students for years.
The shop has been moved to the front and connected to the café. Co-directors Jova Lynne (artistic) and Marie Madison-Patton (operations) have been running the museum together since 2022. The reopening kicks off a year-long 20th anniversary program themed A Practice of Multiplicity.
Mike Kelley's Mobile Homestead, the small detached gallery on the museum's lawn, stayed open during the renovation. It opens Saturday with a new installation by Paris-based artist Loris Gréaud. Phase two of the renovation, which adds a parking lot, outdoor music space, and kitchen, is expected to start later this year.
4454 Woodward Avenue, Midtown.
