Chana Budgazad Sheldon
Four years ago, Chana Budgazad Sheldon became Executive Director of MOCA North Miami. In her very short tenure, she has reinvented the museum to become internationally recognized for its innovative and inclusive programming. Here, Chana discusses her vision for building a world-class institution.
Interview by Philip Smith
Under your leadership, MOCA has become a museum on everyone's radar. You arrived and rebuilt the museum's structure and programming from scratch.
My appointment marked a new chapter for MOCA North Miami and was an exciting opportunity. Here we had one of the region's first major (and beloved) contemporary art institutions, where so many came to know some of the most exciting artists of our time - Teresita Fernandez, Hernan Bas, Friends with You, Yoko Ono, Shinique Smith - ready to be reimagined.
A significant value I kept in my first order of business was planning new exhibitions that reflected my vision to present internationally recognized shows that connected with North Miami's diverse immigrant communities. This meant facilitating engagement and fostering connections among artists, the local community, and the global dialogue about critical issues of the day.
Museum exterior, My Name is Maryan exhibition. Courtesy Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, 2021. Photograph by Oriol Tarridas.
MOCA sits in one of the most diverse neighborhoods in Miami, with significant Haitian, Hispanic, and Jewish populations. How do you serve and appeal to so many different cultures? At MOCA, there seems to be something for everyone. Everyone counts.
Since its inception, MOCA has dedicated itself to making contemporary art accessible to diverse audiences through collecting and exhibiting contemporary art and its historical influences. The work reflects my vision of the museum as a space that embraces and serves the diversity of our dynamic community, where visitors can see a reflection of themselves in our exhibitions and programs.
As MOCA enters its third decade, the institution reaffirms its commitment to presenting exhibitions that resonate with the residents of our city and the broader audience of South Florida, which is home to sizable Caribbean, Latin American, and African diaspora communities and a dedicated network of artists and arts patrons.
We search for the common denominator: art. While our community boasts various cultures (this is one of my favorite things about the museum), anyone can come to us and be inspired by world-class contemporary art. We are proud to continue the work of creating a space for diverse voices and reflection through groundbreaking exhibitions.
And it’s not just our exhibitions that engage everyone. Our robust education initiatives have served the community for over 20 years through outreach programs such as our free after-school Teen Art Force program, Jazz at MOCA (free monthly concerts on MOCA Plaza just outside the museum’s doors), and Art on the Plaza, which commissions a local artist to create public art outside of the museum walls.
Art on the Plaza, Autumn Casey’s Clint and April. Photograph by Daniel Block.
Art on the Plaza, Onajide Shabaka’s Her Touch Smooths Rough Waters. Photograph by Daniel Block.
Your innovative approach to using guest curators to create exhibitions has brought different visions and artists to the exhibition program. Tell us about this dynamic process.
Our visiting curator program is one of my favorite things about MOCA. By collaborating with curators worldwide, our exhibition program has expanded to match that of larger institutions. And most importantly, we’re able to offer multiple perspectives and voices on the art of our time—a necessary ability in a community that’s so culturally diverse.
MOCA’s program is not market-driven, nor an extension of the gallery system. It always feels like art, and the artist comes first.
For starters, we’re committed to supporting local artists. This has been a quality of MOCA since the museum started in 1981. Though we’ve grown over the years, our dedication to those living and making work in South Florida has remained. As far as how an exhibition gets made, we focus on the underexplored and making space in the canon for artists like Maryan, Alice Rahon, AfriCOBRA, and Cecilia Vicuna (at the time of her exhibition.) Another focus is first-time museum surveys such as Mira Lehr (who worked in Miami for decades before having a museum show), Raul de Nieves, and the upcoming exhibition of a Haitian-born and North Miami-raised artist Didier William.
Both the space itself and the exhibition program have been reconfigured. We have a kunsthalle model, generating new content featuring under-recognized artists. This means there’s a level of risk in some of our exhibitions. When you come to MOCA, you’ll find a break from tradition.
Didier William, Mosaic Pool, Miami, 2021, Acrylic collage, ink, wood carving on panel, 68 x 104 inches. Collection of Reginald and Aliya Brown. Photograph by Constance Mensh.
Please give us a brief rundown of the exhibitions at MOCA under your tenure. They all have featured work that is not the standard fare of most museums.
The first show under my purview was AFRICOBRA: Messages to the People, which premiered at MOCA in 2018 before traveling to the 2019 Venice Biennale—a first for a Florida museum.
When it came to AfriCOBRA, we recognized the collective itself was coming up on 50 years, so in celebrating the artists, many in their 70s and 80s, we aimed to center their voices with the collective’s first historicizing survey exhibition, AFRICOBRA: Messages to the People, in November 2018. Their work was critical, especially during a dramatic change in the United States.
This exhibition, curated by Jeffreen M. Hayes, focused on the artworks of founders Jeff Donaldson, Jae Jarrell, Wadsworth Jarrell, Barbara Jones-Hogu, and Gerald Williams, as well as those artists who exhibited with them from 1968 to 1973: Sherman Beck, Napoleon Jones-Henderson, Omar Lama, Carolyn Mims Lawrence, and Nelson Stevens.
Later, we had the first museum solo of Raúl De Nieves in 2020 and the first museum retrospective of Michael Richards, Are You Down?, the posthumous institutional debut of the influential artist whose death in the September 11th attacks was a tragic loss for contemporary art history. And most recently, My Name Is Maryan, a monographic presentation of four decades of paintings, sculptures, drawings, and film by the iconoclastic, ground-breaking Polish-born artist Maryan, will tour the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in 2023 and was uniformly praised in the press as the standout exhibition of Miami Art Week 2021.
We strive to facilitate engagement and foster connections among artists, the local community, and the global dialogue about critical issues of the day.
Installation view, AfriCOBRA exhibition, courtesy Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, 2019. Photograph by Daniel Bock.
Installation view, Raúl de Nieves’ Eternal Return and The Obsidian Heart exhibition, courtesy Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, 2020. Photograph by Michael Lopez with Zachary Balber Photography.
Installation view, Michael Richard’s Are You Down? exhibition, courtesy Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, 2021. Photograph by Daniel Bock.
“We strive to facilitate engagement and foster connections among artists, the local community, and the global dialogue about critical issues of the day.”
—Chana Budgazad Sheldon
Please give us more background on the Maryan exhibition. He was an artist whose childhood was spent in a concentration camp but remained little known to the larger art world. The show received a massive review in the New York Times. Tell what was involved in bringing this broad historical survey together.
My Name is Maryan represents the most comprehensive assembly of work by Polish-born artist Maryan. This monographic exhibition presents four decades of paintings, sculptures, drawings, and films by the iconoclastic artist, who has primarily gone under-recognized until now. Through the exceptional work of guest curator Alison M. Gingeras, the exhibition thoughtfully deconstructs the many layers of Maryan’s practice, from his unique form of figuration to exploring his trauma and lived experience. Maryan connected his personal story to a broader human experience through his work. The exhibition further contextualizes his work among his peers and re-inserts him into his rightful place in the art historical canon.
I am the granddaughter of two holocaust survivors, and I was introduced to Maryan’s work at an early age. My grandmother, Sabine Fox, was a hidden child in France with many other Jewish children and families - including Annette, Maryan’s wife. My grandmother’s bond with Annette lasted far beyond the years of the war. When I started working in the arts, I had the fortune of deepening my relationship with Annette and being introduced to the trove of works by her late husband, Maryan.
In 2018, as the newly appointed Executive Director of MOCA North Miami, I unexpectedly encountered a handful of Maryan’s paintings. The work immediately had a powerful impact on me. Thinking about the museum’s audiences and community, I saw Maryan’s experience as an immigrant as a story that would resonate with the region’s diverse immigrant communities. The work felt urgent and timely. Through pieces such as “Ecce Homo,” Maryan attempted to create an equivalence between the Holocaust and the socio-political struggles of that moment. We had no idea how prolific the artist was and had the honor of presenting work that had never been exhibited, let alone published before.
Guest curator Alison M. Gingeras’ research and scholarship led to the resulting exhibition as a tremendous gift to Maryan’s legacy and a great source of pride for the museum. We are putting the final touches on a comprehensive publication which will be released in conjunction with the exhibition’s travel to the Tel Aviv Museum of Art later this year. I recommend looking out for it!
Maryan, Two Personnages, 1968, Oil on canvas, 52 x 64 inches. Courtesy of Venus Over Manhattan, New York.
Miami is remarkably rich in both public and private museums. Within a few short miles of MOCA are the Perez Art Museum, Bass Art Museum, Lowe Art Museum, Margulies Collection, and De La Cruz collection. Locust Projects and the Rubell Family collection. Despite all these institutions slicing up the cultural pie, MOCA seems to follow its own path with a program unlike any other. Tell us the pluses and minuses of this type of vision.
I'd put it another way. With more slices, there's a bigger pie. One of the best things about living in Miami-Dade is the variety of cultural institutions. As a museum director, the fact that there is such a rich community in place frees us to focus on our neighborhood community, program, and mission. I don't see a minus here, except for the traffic.
It's an exciting time in South Florida with the wealth of institutions and the opportunity for each institution to deepen the work we each do well—we each have our niche. It has also been fascinating to witness many new people relocating from outside of South Florida seeking cultural experiences.
Chana Sheldon, William M. Lehman Jr., Gerald Williams, Jae Jarrell, Wadsworth Jarrell, Dr. Rudolph Moise, Napoleon Jones Henderson, Sheman Beck, Carolyn Mims Lawerence, and Nelson Stevens. Photograph by Daniel Bock.
Both you and your museum are huge advocates for the future of the arts in Miami. Please tell us how you see Miami evolving culturally.
I’m most excited about building generational sustainability in our institutions, artists, and the general community. By thinking long-term, we can lay the groundwork for a future where our institutions continue to draw crowds worldwide. We can support the artists who live and work in South Florida and use art to improve the lives of every person in our community.
Finally, where do you see MOCA in five years?
Growing! But continuing to bring exemplary exhibitions and programming to our immediate community, the region, and beyond.
MOCA North Miami
770 NE 125th street
North Miami
Philip Smith is a visual artist from Miami, Fl., where he currently lives and works. After obtaining a BA from Clark University in 1976, Smith began his studio practice in New York City where he resided full-time until 2018. Smith’s work has been widely exhibited in the US and abroad, including the Whitney and Beijing Biennials, and he is represented in the collections of the Whitney Museum, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Museum of Fine Art, Dallas, Dallas Museum of Art, Perez Art Museum, and Detroit Institute of Art, among others.