Photo by Martha Williams
Mayor Andre Dickens helped cut the ribbon on the new home of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia (MOCA GA) at a private ceremony Monday, September 14, marking a milestone for the museum’s long-awaited West Midtown building.
Dickens joined MOCA GA founder and CEO Annette Cone-Skelton, board chair Philip Babb and capital campaign donor Ron Antinori for the 4 p.m. ceremony, which drew roughly 200 people, including artists, donors, the building’s architects, museum supporters and others from Atlanta’s arts community. After the ribbon was cut, guests streamed from the lobby into the museum’s galleries for a first official look at the new space.
The celebration marked the culmination of more than 26 years of work by Cone-Skelton and the museum’s supporters to create a permanent home for an institution dedicated to Georgia artists.
“This building has been a long time coming,” Cone-Skelton told the crowd. “It’s taken over 26 years to raise the funds, buy the land, create the building, to move in, and here we are.”
Photo by Martha Williams
The 26,000-square-foot building, designed by Mack Scogin Merrill Elam Architects, represents a major new chapter for MOCA GA. The $16.4 million project gives the museum five galleries and a permanent home for a collection that has grown from roughly 250 works when the museum was founded in 2000 to more than 1,600 today.
Dickens, who announced a $2 million City of Atlanta contribution to MOCA GA’s capital campaign in 2024, said the investment was about more than a new building. It was about keeping artists in Atlanta and preserving their work for future generations.
“Artists really do something for a city that no one else can do: they record us,” Dickens said. “Long after a building changes or a neighborhood changes, or a generation passes, somebody can look back at the work created here and they will understand something about Atlanta at that very moment in time.”
That idea is at the heart of MOCA GA’s mission. The museum was founded by Cone-Skelton and David Golden in 2000 in part to create an institution dedicated to preserving and exhibiting the work of Georgia artists. Today, its collection includes more than 1,600 works, along with an archive documenting generations of Georgia artists and arts organizations.
Photo by Martha Williams
During the ceremony, Cone-Skelton presented Dickens with a lithograph titled Saguaro Spirits by Larry Walker, the Atlanta artist and longtime Georgia State University professor.
Walker was born in Franklin, Georgia, in 1935 and moved with his mother and siblings to Harlem as a child. He returned to Atlanta in 1983 to become a professor and chair of the art program at Georgia State University, where he remained until his retirement in 2000. He continued making and exhibiting art for decades and was one of the inaugural recipients of MOCA GA’s Working Artist Project award. He passed away in December of 2023.
The particular print presented to Dickens was selected from Walker’s estate by his daughter, the renowned contemporary artist Kara Walker.
Photo by Martha Williams
The gift offered a fitting connection between the museum’s mission and Dickens’ remarks about artists preserving the history of a city. Walker spent decades documenting and contributing to Atlanta’s arts community, while MOCA GA has spent more than two decades building an institution devoted to preserving the work of Georgia artists.
After Dickens’ remarks, Cone-Skelton thanked him and the city for supporting MOCA GA and Atlanta’s arts community. “What you said is exactly who we are, what we are, and what we hope to be,” she said.
The ribbon-cutting officially opened the building, but the public will have to wait a little longer. MOCA GA is expected to open to the public later this month, pending final permits.
Photo by Martha Williams
