Image: Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit
MOCAD’s 20th-anniversary exhibition, ‘20 Years of MOCAD: A Practice of Multiplicity — Parts II–VI,’ opens November 4, 2026. The exhibition is scheduled from Wednesday, November 4, through Sunday, April 4, 2027, at the Main Building’s Central Gallery, Gallery 1 (Front), Gallery 2 (Blackbox), and Woodward Gallery. The project commemorates two decades of the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, which opened in 2006.
Bringing together artists who have helped define MOCAD’s identity, the exhibition reflects on the relationships, ideas, and communities that have sustained the Museum while looking toward its future. Its practices span installations, sculpture, painting, sound, performance, and socially engaged practices.
The exhibition unfolds through a four-part framework addressing experimentation and process; artists as generative forces who helped define the institution’s direction and ethos; Detroit’s spatial, social, and infrastructural conditions as active material; and practices rooted in community, care, and shared knowledge.
Participating artists include Amna Asghar, Kevin Beasley, Sanford Biggers, Dara Birnbaum, Allora & Calzadilla, Martin Creed, Arthur Jafa, Rashid Johnson, KAWS, Mike Kelley, Glenn Ligon, Kara Walker, Hank Willis Thomas, and many others.
Named works include Hank Willis Thomas’s ‘Raise Up,’ a 2014 bronze; Kara Walker’s ‘Goliath VS David,’ made in 2022 in ink and cut paper on paper; and Metabolic Studio’s statement neon, dated 2006.
