Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art — Attraction in Virginia Beach

We do not recommend MOCA as a wedding venue. Several issues we brought up in advance were not taken care of, and more issues arose the night of our wedding. We were members of the museum and frequented it often, but each time we’d go, the bathrooms would be dirty, and would have little to no soap/paper towels. We brought this up to the event manager and she said she had noticed the same, and would ensure those would not be problems during our wedding. On the big day, bathrooms were dirty, we ran out of paper towels after 1.5 hours, and there was no soap. Let me reiterate. No soap. All of our guests, and our catering staff, were left rinsing hands in just water and then drying them on their clothes or shaking them to air dry. Hard to believe a venue that regularly hosts events and weddings would not supply soap and paper towels, which are very basic necessities. There are also sinks/toilets in the getting ready rooms, but no paper towels or soap were supplied in those rooms. In the women’s getting ready room, the toilet began to leak. After just 3 uses from the bridal party, the room was flooding, and with no onsite manager present, we were cleaning it ourselves. It is hard to believe no one knew about the toilet in advance considering how much it leaked. Now for the grossest part: throughout the evening, there were several HUGE cockroaches running around. One ran into the getting ready room area and the rest were all out where we were eating, dancing, and trying to enjoy ourselves. Some were stomped on, others were chased back into the trees (the venue has lovely trees inside…which apparently house bugs). The most frustrating and disheartening part of this is that we brought up all of these issues to the event manager after the fact, and she never responded. Not even to offer a simple, “I’m sorry.” So again, we do not recommend this venue. There are other gorgeous options to choose from in the Virginia Beach area that will care more about their client’s...

The facilities were great, a bit small, but very clean, open air, and easy to navigate. I would revisit for a different, less politically bent exhibit. I'm glad the facilities were free. As a young person mentioned while I was there of the exhibition, "this is not art, this sounds like our school teaching history." I would agree. The "art" was more about selling an agenda on new, single sided idea on race history in Norfolk, which is missing critical parts of reality and ignores the role of self determination in that antebellum history, and laced with LGTBQ expressionism for the sake of LGTBQ expressionism. The only art worth seeing is the enormous Chihuly glass structure, which is sadly placed at the end of the exhibit hall. Some say art is successful when it incites or evokes emotions. Well, Fox News and CNN do the same thing and that does not make them art. The only emotion this exhibit evoked was disappointment, lameness, bias, and more, one sided, self important, me-first, political indoctrination, that reflects class level-narcissism and self-loathing.....sounds like Fox News and CNN. There is nothing contemporary about the current exhibit and its blatant messaging. Visitor should hope this museum, based in a place where people come together to be excited, encouraged, relaxed, and renewed with light and happiness would aim to be more forward looking/contemporary in their exhibit...

Every now and then you need a little culture in your life. I decided to visit the Museum of Contemporary Art, located on Park Ave just before you reach the boardwalk. I was curious about an exhibit it was holding this week. This was my first visit to the museum. There is no admission fee and plenty of parking.Upon entering the building, you could see it had great lighting and the building was spacious and airy. We were greeted by a host at the door . She explained to us the main exhibit that was taking place this month and also where to find it. We also received a map of the gallery. It's ok to take pictures which is always a plus and there are plenty of staff around to answer any questions. The most wonderful thing is that there are plenty of benches located throughout the gallery to stop and rest. To the left of the entrance is a small book nook. There you can stop in and take a look at some books on display that maybe of interest to you . This was a great week to visit. The museum was also holding a quilting exhibition. There they had several beautiful quilts hung by a group that could be viewed. The main attraction was by an artist name Kara Walker called "Cut to the Quick" and LaToya Hobbs exhibits called Flourish. Both interesting and worth seeing. I enjoyed my day at the ar museum and certainly worth keeping an eye on for other exhibits...