the mona story

The MONA Story, or, Jef Until Now

Jef Bourgeau may very well be the savior of Detroit art. Saviors are easy to spot, they are the ones who are hanging from the crucifixes.

For those who don’t know, Bourgeau was Detroit’s hottest contemporary artist in the 90s. Critics' darling (back when Detroit had art critics), shows at OK Harris (back when the galleries were in Birmingham), and created the area’s first contemporary museum, the Museum of New Art (MONA), a move that took him directly into the hallowed halls of the DIA.

That all changed when the first DIA/MONA collaboration exhibit, Van Gogh’s Ear opened. In short, The DIA freaked, they locked the doors to the exhibition and gave Bourgeau the boot. It seemed to be a case of pre-emptive censorship, basically would the exhibit offend rather than did it. Historically, censorship had been a good artistic career move, but Bourgeau’s solo art career seemed to come to a screeching halt. He was more or less demonized for daring to show the taboo, pieces that dealt with race, sexuality, religion and contemporary art itself.

A generation later, the subsequent resurrection has not received the attention it deserves. The spotlight on Bourgeau and more so, MONA should be brighter in a city that is just starting to realize that art is not a liability. MONA has been an unbroken chain of disparate spaces in divergent locations and satellites since it’s inception in 1996. A permanent location was built in Armada, which being close to an hour drive from Detroit is both a curse and blessing. It’s a shockingly appealing space, a most worthy vessel for big ideas and hand-crafted imagination. We marvel at this world class showplace, it’s an artist’s retreat, a respite from the decay of Detroit, all the time wishing it was closer to the city and there was room for a couple more wines before the breathalyzer bells rang.

SO IT BEGINS

We asked Bourgeau how this came to be, ”In 1994, on my long drive back from a solo show in Chicago, I questioned why a Detroit artist had to go somewhere else to have a career, anywhere but Detroit? One of the major missing puzzle pieces to that greater picture was a contemporary museum that both supported local artists as well as exhibiting them side-by-side with the biggies from everywhere else.” He also suggested other missing parts like a nationally read art magazine (i.e.: Chicago’s New Art Examiner). Other things Bourgeau saw lacking in the promotion of home grown artists included, “A gallery system that respected and promoted local artists outside of the gallery walls, as much as those from NYC, LA and Chicago and almost anywhere else, and finally a collector base, like Chicago's, that proudly built collections of their own artists.” Bourgeau continues, “Anyway, starting a contemporary museum seemed the easiest of these options. No board, no rich patrons, no space, no support of any kind - just do it.

THE BIRTH OF THE MUSEUM OF NEW ART (MONA)

“The Museum of New Art was intended to combine all the mediums I’d worked with since a kid: writing, drawing, film/video, photography --- into one large installation/happening.” Bourgeau created a fictitious cast, including Jane Speaks and her gallery that would launch ‘MONA’. There was also her daughter Christina who would help found the museum on her mother’s death, Richard Long (Jane’s widower and founding president of the MONA board), and Cesar Marzetti the outspoken arrogant curator – “one day we will no longer have need of the artist, the curator will be the superstar of art.”

MONA started in Pontiac in 1996 with all the big ideas and plans and connections a full-blown museum would, “With the belief that eventually the space would grow into these big ideas and concepts. MONA's mission was never small, only its birth space.”

Pontiac provided some very real shows, although these were often comprised of images torn, matted and framed from art books and magazines. While others, like DOCUMENTA USA (the artist' boxes) provided the opportunity for over 100 local artists to be shown side by side with national and international artists including Vito Acconci, Jenny Holzer, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Ultra-Violet and Arman. Several hundred artists had been exhibited, with the usually neglected Detroit area artists in the house. Much of this took place in what was in a 10x10 foot walk-in closet.

Bourgeau didn’t expect what started out as an artist project to last long, going on 20 years now. “I expected it to play out in a year or two, make its point to the community here in that time: how much a real contemporary museum is needed in Detroit and how important it is to support our own best talent.” He explains, “It did manage to upset a few people who were in the position to make things happen. "You're making us all look like a bunch of art hicks!" -- with a closet museum.

THE DEATH OF ART

In 1997 Bourgeau was doing the APERTO show (one wall, one artist, one work). “Becky Hart (later promoted to curator at the DIA) walked in. I didn't know her then, and so wasn't aware she made the visit) and she was blown away by the high-level of artist interaction and outright Happening feel to it all. That's the word the DIA staff used to describe it. I was invited down to the DIA and asked to recreate what I'd been doing in Pontiac in one of their smallest galleries. To examine the art of the 90s in particular.” The DIA signed him up for 12 exhibitions over 3 months under the auspices of his Pontiac contemporary museum.

The first exhibit, titled Van Gogh's Ear, was Bourgeau’s examination of the art of the 90s. It featured featured mock sculptures and installations and was credited to the artists who'd played the important roles in that decade; Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst, Andres Serrano and so on. Bourgeau’s name was not anywhere in the exhibit.

“My understanding was there were fears that some of the work might possibly offend some people, particularly Christians who might view the show. There was never such an incident though, other than with with the DIA’s David Penney,” Bourgeau didn’t know who Penney was at the time however he had noticed “a well-dressed man muttering and disturbed as he read the wall labels under his breath, then hurriedly left”. It was later discovered the man was David Penney. Within 3 days of its opening, the DIA’s new director, Graham Beal padlocked the doors and shut down the show, allegedly over worries it might be offensive.

In previous instances, having an exhibition shut down is possibly the biggest career blast an artist can get. In this instance, Bourgeau’s career was stopped dead in its tracks. He became artist non grata not only at the DIA, but shut out galleries where he had been exhibiting as well. This was different than the government trying to shut down museums, it was self regulation from the inside. The type of thing one of Bourgeau’s own fictitious characters might do.

“Once that show was shut-down, I thought 'well, we took the conceptual notion of a contemporary museum as far as possible. Even made it 3D diorama friendly and by invitation embedded it inside of the city's great historic museum, and without a penny in funding. Now, do I walk away with that satisfaction of having created this huge project in a little box. Or, do I take the DIA's act of shutting down a contemporary museum, albeit tiny and concept-driven, as the ultimate grand challenge and final proof how much the city still needed one. Fear No Art was still the popular tag going around.” Bourgeau recalls.

The Death of Show = Birth of MONA as We Know It

“So there was nowhere else to push MONA - but validate her into the very real realm of a 501(c)3 non-profit museum. It became the real thing. Like Santa in a Miracle on 34th Street, if the U.S. Government (read IRS) declares MONA a museum then it is. And for all intents and purposes we were” They formed an operating board: a lawyer, a webmaster, a curator, a collector, an architect, a gallerist, an artist, the former founding director of two other major museums. They secured a lease-free 12,000 sq foot downtown space to exhibit all the new and latest art. “International artists alongside Detroit artists. That was always our mandate.” It was in this following 4-year period, Bourgeau stopped creating any of his own work and concentrated his life as a museum director, “Remember, all this was done without real funding and without a salary of any sort. From 2000 to 2004, we exhibited Sol LeWitt, Kaws, Yoko Ono, Iain Baxter, Crash, Kutlug Ataman, Lucio Pozzi and many more alongside young and emerging Detroiters' works.”

When that building was foreclosed and boarded-up, Bourgeau returned to Pontiac, this time with seven galleries and a small theater at his disposal - all housed in a three-story 30,000 sq foot building on mainstreet. “We really took off, exhibiting well over a thousand artists over that next decade. We never looked back and we never took a breath, often having up to seven separate artist openings a month. At the same time, having so much exhibition space to fill,, Bourgeau notched out the smallest gallery of the seven to continue his own 'art of reworking art', - which allowed him to maintain his sanity and evolution as an artist.

Bourgeau continues, “I’m no administrator and when the MONA board first met in 2000 - I told them as much, to go find someone else, and considering the way the DIA affair had played out that I was a liability in any public position, plus I wanted to get back to my own art career. They insisted it was a no-go without me, that they were only there because of me, and that the MONA would never exist without me as its director. I told them I'd sign on for three years, until someone else had been found.”

Since then, MONA has taken on a life of its own, bringing in global artists like the Gao Brothers, Elene Usdin, Nicole Eisenman, Olaf Breuning, Uta Barth, Erwin Olaf ... and critics like Jerry Saltz for one-on-one opportunities with local artists. And the museum has promoted and exhibited hundreds and hundreds of other artists (there were 1000 in the FACEBOOK SHOW alone, and another 700 in THE SELFIE), most from Detroit and the region, at every level of their career. As an artist himself, Bourgeau has embraced digital photography and painting as his main medium, “I've been doing it since 1981 but only now has the technology really caught up with the reality of paint and canvas.”

His current show, Zombie on The Wall, shows just how deep he’s swimming in pixels. A room which is literally wallpapered with well-designed abstracts. A historical homage of styles that would not be out of place in the stuffy wing any contemporary museum. Without a loupe you would never know they weren’t painted the old fashioned way.

Wile Mona may not have the cache or patronage of MOCAD, the endeavor has been more than admirable. An art museum run by artists is not only novel, it’s brilliant. In other cities it might be more celebrated, many of the same ideas Bourgeau has done seem to get much more aclaim when echoed by others in New York. Through it all, Bourgeau remains undeterred, “I do believe those that dismiss everything that's been done with and at MONA over the last two decades, have either never visited the space, or, should know better since they probably know someone personally who has 'legitimately' exhibited here.”

But MONA has made a difference in a lot of artists and patrons lives. It’s brought in artists, local and not, who might have never been seen in these parts. How can there be any other side to an argument about more outlets for artists in an area? It’s all good.

by Jerry Vile for ZIPR magazine, FALL 2015