Ending nearly three years of anticipation, the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto Canada (MOCA) will be re-opening at its new home in Toronto’s Lower Junction on May 26. After leaving its former home on Queen Street West, the museum will return to Toronto’s west end at its new home in the historic Automotive Building on Sterling Road.
The museum will inaugurate its new home with an exhibit called BELIEVE. According to the Globe and Mail, the exhibition “looks at what it means to inhabit a truly pluralistic society.” Curated by MOCA Curator David Liss, BELIEVE will feature the work of 15 artists, including work from well-known Canadian and international names, as well as local up and coming Toronto artists.
Formerly known as the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art (or ‘MOCCA’), the museum left its former Queen West home in the Summer of 2015, and was initially slated to re-open on Sterling Road last year. At 55,000 square feet, the museum’s new space — taking up the 10-storey Automotive Building’s first five floors — will be five times as large as the former MOCCA.
The BELIEVE exhibition will take up the second and third floors, with the museum’s ground floor given over to a porous and community-oriented “front porch” space. Above, the fourth floor will be given over to 20 artist studios, with MOCA’s own offices and meeting rooms occupying the museum’s uppper level.
Completed in 1919, the Automotive Building was long used as a manufacturing facility for the defunct automobile company, before being shuttered in 2006. Designed by Toronto’s architectsAlliance, the new museum space will eventually be at the heart of a re-invented neighbourhood, developed primarily by Castlepoint Numa. More information about the new Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto and the inaugural BELIEVE exhibit will be made available via MOCA’s official website, linked here.