about

Detroit has the potential to reclaim its place as a major center for art, craft and design. There is every reason to believe this city can sustain the quality of achievement and degree of creative excitement necessary to produce, nurture and support local talent. If the arts are not given the means to flourish, the artists will move elsewhere. It is up to the community to remedy the situation.

Detroit now has the opportunity to meet this challenge. The founding of a contemporary art museum in Detroit is an event of the greatest importance for the entire community. History teaches that healthy competition is the breath of life for culture as well as business.

In the best of democratic traditions, MONA aspires to bridge the gap between the art establishment and larger community of working artists. One group is bound to reap benefits for the other. Influences will flow in and out, and our city will play an even more active role in the world than it has to date.

MONA will originate exhibitions that have not yet been seen in other parts of the country. It will also bring to Detroit exhibitions that previously could not be shown because of the lack of a sponsoring institution. The artists featured will be from around the world.

2000 until today

MONA is a non-profit contemporary art museum with three locations in Metro Detroit. MONA's goal is to fulfill the region's need for a lively and intimate space to experience contemporary art.

MONA is a public site for developing and presenting new and challenging works in all art forms; for forging innovative ways of thinking about the wider culture and for experimenting with the presentation of the arts.

MONA is dedicated to presenting the finest regional, national and international art of the last 40 years in a dynamic exhibition schedule accompanied by publications and educational programming.

The Museum believes the living artists are the greatest assets to appreciating art and seeks to bring artists and the public into contact in as many ways as possible.

The Museum's exhibitions reflect its belief in the importance of the free flow of ideas, and that the visual arts are among the most sophisticated yet direct forms of human expression,

Most major institutions are concerned with conserving the past, whereas MONA aims at highlighting the present.

1996 to 2000

Detroit’s Museum of New Art (MONA) was at its start a research-oriented project that produced exhibitions about art but often largely devoid of the actual art. MONA’s primary purpose, since 1996 especially, was to explore the possibilities of exhibition-making as a distinct and truly alternative practice.

MONA’s most typical but also most famous such exhibition occurred at the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) in 1999. This commissioned exhibition consisted of reproductions, surrogates, models, stage-sets, or common objects, displayed using a combination of rhetorical devices borrowed from history and established museums (e.g. extensive wall-labels, photo-documentation, vitrines, videos, ephemera) and art galleries (free-standing wall-shelves, amateurish sculpture, pedestals). This 12 week exhibition was closed and padlocked after only three days into its run. It was shut-down by the DIA itself, not because of the improvised composition of its art, but, because of the extreme nature of the referenced artwork: ostensibly, the art of the 90s.

Nearly all of MONA’s exhibitions, before and since, would be difficult -- if not impossible -- to show in any other context, be it any other museum, small nonprofit, or commercial gallery. First, there is the issue of there being no original artworks. Second, the shows are generally, though not exclusively, realized without the involvement of artists. And finally, the projects tend to be ambivalent or skeptical, and often even openly critical, of their subjects and the art world itself. In short, there is no art, there are no artists; there is only the exhibition.

MONA has frequently been mislabeled a conceptual art project. It isn't. The founder, Jef Bourgeau, is first an artist, but also an art historian and curator. Still, it is understandable why people might characterize it this way as the language does not yet exist to characterize this type of activity.

On other occasions, people have described MONA as an art-historical or curatorial performance, which -- given the ephemeral nature of the projects, the frequent use of historical or fictional subjects, and the lack of any obvious artist-agents -- is more accurate. As early as 1996, journalism seems to have been of equal influence. Issues of reproduction, permission, misrepresentation, anonymous sourcing, and narrative construction have all been fundamental to MONA’s success.

IN RECENT YEARS

In the last few years, MONA has evolved into a unique blurring of all the elements mentioned above alongside further new ideas and reimaginations as to how a 21st century museum might function in the future.

MONA has become a complex of several museums. It's motto being: A museum on every corner.

STAFF

Jef Bourgeau | Creative Director

Jef is an American photographer, painter and conceptual artist. He is also the founding director of the Museum of New Art (MONA), of Detroit's artCORE (empty storefronts to galleries), and co-founder of the Detroit Center for Contemporary Photography.

Paul Smith | Project Director

Paul embraces the role of realizer of ideas. He views Project MONA’s as a set of noble principles, a bold philosophy, and a creative movement, all that is of supreme importance to life and art. He is dedicated to see this project to fruition, and beyond.

Jessica Hopkins | Chief Curator

Her exhibitions are like space travel. Jessica insists on taking the present into the future. Her unique eye possesses neutrality that reflects current culture rather than trying to impose or predict its course.