“Detroit is a city of relationships,” Jova Lynne, an artist, curator, and codirector of the city’s Museum of Contemporary Art, tells me on a chilly day in December. I was in town to check out Detroit’s rapidly expanding art scene, and already this was clear to me. Collaboration is not just some buzzword, but at the core of how things get done.
Lynne is explaining this as she shows me a few works from the upcoming career survey of Olayami Dabls, a local artist and the founder of Dabls MBAD African Bead Museum, a cultural institution rooted in African materiality and storytelling on Detroit’s west side. For years, Lynne has wanted to stage an exhibition of Dabls’s work—paintings, sculptures, public murals, and assemblages made of wood, rocks, beads, bits of mirror, and other objects—but it was important to her to get it right.
“He’s a Detroit legend, and he has not had a solo museum show in 40-plus years,” Lynne noted. She knew an exhibition of such breadth would take time, and no small amount of coordination.
But the collaborative efforts paid off, and this past weekend “Olayami Dabls: Detroit Cosmologies” was one of four exhibitions that opened at MOCAD, which together ring in a new chapter at the museum and kick off its 20th anniversary year.
The reopened Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit building, which has been renamed the Julia Reyes Taubman Building in honor of the museum’s late founder.
Photo: Elonte Davis / Courtesy of MOCAD
The new shows coincide with the museum’s grand reopening after an eight-month closure for renovations. MOCAD’s main building, originally an auto showroom built in 1907 by famed Detroit architect Albert Kahn, needed upgrades to the HVAC system, roof, and admissions desk, and a solid wall along bustling Woodward Avenue is now a massive picture window, giving passersby a chance to glimpse the art from the street.
But the jubilation over MOCAD’s reopening is not just because of a refreshed building. The museum is reemerging from a reckoning in 2020, not unlike those at other cultural institutions; following accusations of a toxic workplace and racial microaggressions, the former MOCAD director was ousted. In 2023, Lynne and Marie Madison-Patton were named the museum’s new codirectors, and the two have been instrumental in resetting MOCAD’s priorities—doubling down on accessibility, civic engagement, and education in addition to celebrating local contemporary art.
An installation view of “Olayami Dabls: Detroit Cosmologies” at MOCAD.
Photo: Daniel Ribar / Courtesy of MOCAD
