MOCA GA / Calendar

Continuing our year-long celebration, marking 25 years since the signing of MOCA GA’s articles of incorporation and 501C3 status, we reflect on the first 10 years of exhibitions and collecting.  The years between 2002 and 2012 saw nearly 600 new acquisitions to the permanent collections encompassing a wide variety of artistic mediums and a diverse group of Georgia artists.  True to the mission of the museum, these exhibitions focused on Georgia artists and often included curators and scholars specializing in the contemporary art of the state.  In April of 2002, for example, MOCA GA’s first exhibition to explore Georgia art history, Artists of the Heath Gallery: 1965 to 1998, honoring veteran Gallerist David Heath, opened to the public and was curated by Emory University Professor and Contemporary Art Curator John C. Howett, long-time Arts Administrator, Laura Lieberman and former High Museum Director Gudmund Vigtel.

To further highlight and promote Georgia’s artistic talent, several of the more than 100 exhibitions held between 2002 and 2012, showcased fantastic corporate, municipal, and private collections as well as local arts foundations which had been supporting Georgia artists and collecting artwork, for many years.  Some of these exhibitions included Selected Work from the Georgia State Art Collection;  Focus: Corporate Collections; Dark Roots: The Atlanta University and Atlanta Life Insurance Company Annuals;  and Forward Arts, recognizing the Forward Arts Foundation’s Emerging Artist Award Program. Several of these exhibitions were held at Sun Trust plaza, which served as a satellite gallery for the Museum between 2005 and 2007.

During this period The Last TABOO, exhibition commemorated the influence of an exceptional group of gay artists, their talent, and activism throughout the 1990’s.  MOCA GA houses both permanent collection artwork of Taboo artists and materials from the TABOO collective within its extensive Georgia art archives. Additionally, the 2006 exhibition Artists Photographing Artists established MOCA GA’s artist portraiture collection, documenting Georgia’s talent through the eyes of Georgia photographers.

In 2007 as MOCA GA staff prepared to move from the original 1447 Peachtree space, to the Museum’s new home in the Tula Art building, MOCA GA announced a new legacy initiative… the Working Artist Project or “WAP,” which was to be funded by a grant from the Charles Loridans Foundation.  Currently in its 18^th cycle, and still funded by Loridans as well as The Antinori Foundation, with additional funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, 51 artists have become WAP Fellows.  Each of these exceptional artists contribute work from their WAP solo exhibition to the MOCA GA permanent Collection.

Shortly after relocating the collection and Education Research Center to the Tula Building, Phase II of demolition/renovation on an additional 10,000 square feet for MOCA GA was completed.  Larry Walker, Surface, Spirit Voices and Other Secrets: The Wall Series in Transition, both the first WAP Exhibition and the first of over 180 exhibitions to come, opened in June of 2008, and shortly after, the Museum catalogued the first work from the Working Artist Project into the permanent collection.

2009 -2012 continued with additional new programming 14 more Working Artist Project shows and associated acquisitions. Woven throughout these exhibitions were artist and curator talks, offsite studio tours, pin-up shows, fundraising Galas/auctions and celebrations, MOCA GA produced catalogues, oral histories and documentaries highlighting Georgia Artists… and of course, the continued its acquisition of some of the best contemporary artwork that Georgia has to offer.

Above Image: Detail of Freddie Styles Study in Black and White and Silver, Group II #4, 2002, Mixed media on paper, Gift of the Artist, 2005.053