JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – “Bringing education, creativity, and community to the heart of downtown Jacksonville” is a part of what The Museum of Contemporary Art brings to the River City. The museum is also bringing in a birthday, celebrating 100 years.
Caitlin Doherty is the executive director, and our guest for This Week in Jacksonville: Business Edition.
“At the Museum of Contemporary Art Museum, we focus on artwork predominantly from the 1960s to the present day, or what I say, the art of our time,” Doherty said.
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“We focus on art, artists and ideas, and we do that through exhibitions, programs, all of which we hope contribute to our community and help to build the kind of community that we want and that we all want to live, work and play in,” Doherty said. “We see our role downtown is very important, helping to drive the success of downtown, nourish downtown, as well as our broader Jacksonville area.”
Part of our conversation dives into the economic impact of MOCA, and how that translates to the community of museums in Jacksonville.
“It’s about art and culture being a vehicle to help drive social and economic change and progress. Right now we have brand new work by Frank Stella. He is the foremost contemporary living American sculptor.”
Stella created the “Jacksonville Stacked Stars” collection curated specifically for the 100th-year celebration.
“It’s a 30-foot, almost five-ton extravaganza of sculpture, which is filling our entire atrium space. It’s literally looking to the heavens and dreaming about the next hundred years to come,” Doherty said.
“It’s a cultural fabric, and we want it to be beautifully patterned. We need every piece of that pattern to make sense of the overall, and we need the Cummer to be doing well,” Doherty said.
Doherty recognized the united front that MOCA shares with other museums and other performing arts venues in Jacksonville.
“We need the MOSH to be doing well. We need the Ritz to be doing well. Yeah, the Florida Theater, the symphony, all these people that we collaborate with, we connect with and that we champion. We need to be championing each other. We cannot be insular. We need to be open. We need to be collaborative, and we need to be looking at the bigger picture, which is for everyone’s benefit here in Jacksonville.”
MOCA is planning activities all year to celebrate.
“When we were established 100 years ago. Extraordinary women said they wanted to create the kind of community that they wanted to live in. And they said they would do that through art,” Doherty said. “They brought the artists, leading artists of the time to Jacksonville, and they fundraised through those exhibitions for public school education.”
Doherty credits community-building education and art as the museum’s “center to our core 100 years.”