Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit — Attraction in Detroit

Simply put, the MOCAD is an amazing museum that not enough locals or tourists know about.

There is no admission fee: they take donations and have some items for sale that go towards the museum. They regularly cycle out the exhibitions, which are usually from local artists. Each one I see is masterful, and they incite commentary. I'm particularly fond of the viewing room, which always has some cool short film or exhibit that forces you to be present. The rest of the space flows nicely, allowing you to walk through each area confidently and without confusion. It's always clean (even the bathrooms) and the staff are very friendly and chill.

The MOCAD Café is also a delight. You don't need to visit the museum to visit the café, as it's located directly to your right as soon as you walk in, bypassing the museum all together. The space holds plenty of tables with seats, and there are more seats at the stocked bar. The bartender, a young black guy with a great sense of style (of a name I have forgotten), was a peach. He's always friendly and quick with orders. He claimed that he was the curator of the drink menu for the winter season and let me say: he did that. I tried two drinks, and they were both outstanding. They also sell baked goods and non-alcoholic beverages like coffee and tea, and most are locally sourced. I had a slice of vegan orange cake, and it was delicious.

Parking is a breeze. There's plenty of street parking, and even on busy days, the furthest you'll walk is 1-2 minutes.

Visit the MOCAD and make a donation, big or small. They deserve more support from the community they already...

If I could, I would give a zero rating.

I have booked the MOCAD for my event (higher education institution) in mid-May for the event in mid-September, after hosting there for at least a couple of years. At the end of July, I had reached out to them for scheduling a meeting to go over floor plans and details for the event, and it took them a whole week to reply, where they communicated to me that due to renovation, they would have to cancel my event. Needless to say, with a month a half way from the event, this presented several challenges. In my response to them (which went unanswered), I have asked them whether this renovation had been previously scheduled, as these are usually planned years ahead, and if so, why had I been allowed to book my event, if they knew they wouldn’t be able to accommodate. It also was extremely challenging to get back the refund of the deposit originally paid (after several attempts, it was received at the end of August).

I have been in the events industry for several years now (both as venue manager as a planner), and I have never dealt with so little professionalism and lack of integrity and communication. The least that the venue could have done was to go above and beyond and help me find a substitute venue, but there was very little to zero care about a lost...

I'm not a fan of contemporary art, but I am into supporting local artists, especially young black artists in and around Detroit. They recently had a talk featuring Dora Apel of WSU on ruin porn, and the book she wrote. I was really looking forward to it, until upon attending realized it was all white hipsters that feed gentrification, there to look at images of ruin porn...at a lecture that was supposed to be critical of ruin pornography.

During Q/A, a born and raised Detroit woman asked how the professor can reconcile being critical of ruin pornography, all while showing image after image of these desolate buildings in the same vein as ruin pornographers do, and that, in fact, nearly everyone in attendance was there to view the images and not take the criticism to heart.

I've since stopped attending talks there, and would much rather attend academic lectures in the academic setting, hard for me to get over that...