MOCA's long march
MOCA — or the Art Gallery of North York, or MOCCA, all of which figure into the plucky museum’s patchwork history — has covered miles and years from Mel Lastman Square all the way, finally, to its stately, spanking new home on Sterling Road. David Liss, the museum’s curator, has been along for almost all of that ride. Did he ever doubt this day would come?
“Not for a moment,” he said. Did he foresee the long and winding road along the way? “Ah, no,” he says with a laugh. Here it is, step by step.
1993: The Art Gallery of North York is founded, occupying a small footprint in what is now the Toronto Centre for the Arts.
1999: After Toronto’s amalgamation, the gallery adopts not-for-profit status, becoming an arms-length agency of the city of Toronto, and became the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art.
2000: MOCCA hires David Liss, then director/curator of Montreal’s Saidye Bronfman Centre, as its inaugural chief, and gives him a mandate to turn the regional gallery into a national concern.
2004: Liss builds MOCCA’s credibility and connections, hosting both the RBC Painting Competition and the annual Sobey Art Award exhibition, major national events. But, as MOCCA prepares to move downtown, Liss gets word that the museum’s allotment from the city is to be cut by $63,000. For an institution operating with scant staff and on a shoestring, it looks to be a crippling blow, but public outcry helps reverse the decision. Liss and MOCCA secure a 10-year lease in burgeoning Queen Street West, a hotbed of artists and creative activity.
2005: After a city-funded $500,000 renovation, the new MOCCA opens with an exhibition of Toronto-based artist Bill Burns’ work, entitled Safety Gear for Small Animals.
2008: Liss continues his alliance- building, striking a partnership with the Contact Photography Festival to host its major feature exhibition each year. The partnership would endure until MOCCA’s 2015 closure.
2009: Liss keeps an eye on the property market, thinking of MOCCA’s next move. He meets Alfredo Romano, a developer with background as a film producer, who seems to have a potential project in the works for the city’s east end. Tower Automotive, the 12-storey heritage building on Sterling Rd. that Romano’s Castlepoint acquired in 2008, comes up, but Romano’s plan is a tower.
2010: Liss strikes another deal, now with the National Gallery of Canada, to give MOCCA’s secondary gallery space to the country’s largest museum for touring shows of its unparalleled collection. The partnership brings bigname stars into the plucky institu- tion, including artists like Louise Bourgeois.
2012: MOCCA’s building is sold, and the new owners are condominium developers. Liss and board chair Julia Ouellette begin an intensive search for a new home. MOCCA changes its status from a city agency to an independent charity, giving it access to donations.
Liss and Ouellette reconnect with Romano who, after many rejected schemes for his Sterling properties, suggests MOCCA be the Auto Tower’s anchor tenant. Ouellette and Liss go see the property, a ramshackle husk filled only with graffiti: “I think we knew even then: This was it,” she says later.
2015: MOCCA opens its final exhibition in its Queen Street Space, Dean Baldwin’s nautically themed Queen West Yacht Club, a nod to its enduring conviviality. Liss announces a 40-year lease with Castlepoint for the five bottom floors of the Auto Tower, and a move-in date of late 2016. It’s announced that Chantal Pontbriand, the former director of public programming at Tate Modern in London, will be MOCCA’s first CEO.
2016: In March, Pontbriand presides over a splashy media launch, rebranding MOCCA as MOCA (Museum of Contemporary Art) Toronto Canada, promising an unorthodox first year of programming and an opening in May 2017. She also announces a secondary building, MOCA II, to open in 2020. In June, Pontbriand abruptly leaves the museum. Both sides cite a confidentiality agreement. Longtime MOCCA backer Terry Nicholson steps in as interim CEO. Nicholson tells the Star that MOCA’s opening will be delayed from May to November of 2017.
2017: In January, MOCA names November Paynter its director of programs. Paynter comes from Istanbul’s SALT constellation of contemporary art institutions — one of the key inspirations that Pontbriand had described.
In August, Nicholson confirms that the museum’s opening will be delayed again, to spring of 2018. In October, MOCA names Pontbriand’s replacement: Heidi Reitmaier, a Torontonian via London, Vancouver and Chicago.
2018: Reitmaier arrives with a May opening date now on the calendar. But in late April, it becomes clear that the building will still not be ready. In a public event in early May to announce a $5-million provincial pledge to MOCA, Reitmaier pushes the opening back to Sept. 22. The building opens May 26 for Doors Open Toronto, and 4,000 flood the construction site for a first look. September 22, 2018: MOCA opens to the public.