MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART CLEVELAND

Programs: Moca's fiscal year runs from august 1-july 31. Moca staff moved into its new home in cleveland's university circle uptown district in august, 2012 and worked diligently to balance learning and testing the new space while planning and publicizing programs-to-come. The new moca opened to the public the first weekend of october, 2012, during a four day celebration with 4,300+ people attending events. Moca, 47 years old and northeast ohio's only contemporary art museum, has received critical international, national and regional praise for the building's architecture and the diverse exhibitions and programs animating the space, with the greater cleveland community embracing both the building and program. Moca's new home is 10,000 feet larger than the former rented facility, and was specifically designed to meet its programmatic, educational, and back-of-house needs; located in the midst of a vibrant neighborhood among cultural institutions, universities, restaurants and retail; and positioned in close proximity to many area schools and established and new housing. This provides additional space for visitor amenities and professional workspace and storage. The new building has professional workshops, art storage, a multi-purpose room for multi-arts programming, a museum store, caf kiosk, ample office space, and wonderful galleries. The new moca is an architectural focal point and cultural anchor of the new uptown district. Moca's exhibitions and programs have increased dramatically since opening the new location. The exhibition season is robust, with six to eight rotating exhibitions a year, multiple artists, and many moca commissions of new art. Fy14 highlights: exhibitions realization featured 12 of "cleveland's most unique found object artists," (plain dealer) exploring, across a range of media, the relationship between ideas and making and what informs contemporary practices regionally. A season highlight was a gospel performance by moca-featured artist rev. Albert wagner's daughter, bonita, which got 150 people on their feet during our free family fun day. Everything all at once featured four cleveland artists who transform found materials-neon signs, building materials, paper-to make sense of the world around them. For the opening, moca added a region-focused mash-up of art, experimental music, and car culture, which attracted 427 guests with astonishing home-built monster trucks and bikes to explore on the plaza, enlivening "pop-up" performances outside, a talk by the show's curator and artists, and a rock concert. Simon evan's exhibition featured beautiful, intricate text-based compositions, called "intimate, absurd, deliciously personal" by the plain dealer, woven from humble materials like found paper, post-its, and notes penned by the rising star, a former pro-skateboarder. Michelle grabner's first comprehensive solo museum show probed her 20 year practice of painting, sculpture, teaching, critical writing, and curating. A replica of the suburban, the small space grabner maintains next to her home, was built here to house 4 mini exhibitions by artists chosen by grabner. Her shows attracted great critical praise due to the strength of the work and her recent selection as co-curator of the '14 whitney biennial. Dirge, featured works of 23 artists, living and deceased, who used a diversity of mediums to capture, reflect on, and make sense of mortality. Knowing this may be a challenging (but universal) subject, moca partnered with hospice of the western reserve/hwr to assist with exhibition strategies and communications, plan and host programs and educational content, and invite and engage target audiences. Hwr helped moca staff with how the grieving process might relate to visitor services, gallery activities (community voices recordings on loss and memory, library, make an epitaph activity), and educational content (family-friendly visitor guide, activities focused on memories). Moca offered a 4-part lecture series, the end, reconsidered, which examined mortality from vantage points of history, medicine, social work, religion, and featured local doctors, professors, and social workers. Special tours were given to medical professionals and patients. Plain dealer: "dirge is deeply compelling, expertly displayed, and filled with moments of great beauty, tenderness, even humor. " also during the spring season, photographer sara vanderbeek, who the observer called "a breakout in the contemporary art world," presented a new body of work relating to cleveland's landscape, and city textures. Someday is now: the art of corita kent, the first full-scale survey (150+ pieces) of more than thirty years of work by the artist. Throughout her rich and varied career, kent made thousands of posters, murals, and signature serigraphs that combine her passions for faith and politics. The creator of the 1985 usps "love" stamp, kent made thousands of posters, murals, and signature serigraphs that detailed themes of inclusivity, peace, and hope. Concurrently, hans op de beeck: staging silence (2) includes video images based around abstract, archetypal settings that linger in the memory of the artist as the common denominator of the many public places he has experienced. Programs & attendance moca keeps a brisk pace with educational, entertaining, and social events (150+ in fy14), that challenge and appeal to people of all kinds. "after my visit, i took my friends, then parents, then students. They absolutely loved it and their appreciation for contemporary art grew exponentially. " some programs are cornerstone; some newfangled. We strive to maintain 40,000 - 42,000 guests per year, more than doubling from recent past. Education & families cornerstone educational programs continue, like curriculum-based school-to-museum tours offered to local and public schools in our region. Last year, moca provided 1,265 prek-12 students (348 cmsd) intensive tours to connect them with current, compelling art, created by local, regional and global artists. Beyond the exposure to contemporary art, the program offered students the opportunity to discuss the relevance of artworks and ideas to their own lives, to explore the artistic process, to interact with a few artists in residency, and to consider careers in the arts. While stm tours can be arranged any time moca is open, moca's "exschoolsive" hours from 9-11am tuesday through friday, were open to prek-12 teachers and students only, who enjoyed online pre- and post-visit resources, curriculum-based tours, art making activities and special staff access. Teachers who attended moca tours received educator guides and lesson plans. Moca educational staff and docent corps utilize visual thinking strategies (vts), a method initiated by educator-facilitated discussions of art images and documented to have a cascading positive effect on educators and youth. Vts provides a simple format in which educators provide youth with key behaviors sought by common core standards: thinking skills that become habitual and transfer from lesson to lesson, oral and written language literacy, visual literacy, and peer collaboration. 800+ area educators received information last year about moca tours, teacher thursday open houses, and other professional development opportunities. Moca's ace/art & culture enterprise program immerses 10-12 art-career-bound cmsd teens with moca artists, audiences, and staff, guided by cmsd's curricular, cultural, and social goals, and providing teens with intensive museum studies, a public exhibition and event, work and life skills and resilience and pride. Cmsd teachers and administrators continue to value both the expansive and the smaller, intensive programs we provide to the students who cmsd ceo eric gordon noted "might not otherwise experience free art education programs due to economic restraints. " youth & family program outreach, execution, attendance, and audience potential continue to grow. Moca served 3,631 youth through family programs last year, with 5,635 youth, or 15% of moca's total attendance being served overall. Examples of family programs include monthly "first free saturday" family-friendly workshops, monthly stroller tours and artsquad plays sessions offered to young children and guardians, and tinker space events, workshop series for teens and 'tweens who enjoy materials-based experimentation related to exhibitions. Moca is expanding family and youth programs this summer and during fy15 to 1) appeal to a life cycle of family audiences 2) devote a full-time moca space (artsquad plays room) to family learning, workshops, and interactive cratetivity stations and 3) take family programs, and, at times, walkabout characters, moca's artsquad, offsite, to welcome new audiences and leverage relationships with partners and places with a history of successful family connections. Operations & finance moca's fiscal year runs from august 1, 2013-july 31, 2014. This fiscal period was moca's first full y