The Museum Director: Elysia Borowy-Reeder
“One reason art is truly necessary is that it can be a safe haven for unsafe ideas when things are difficult. Which is why it's important for alternative art spaces to exist and be accessible.”
5 Questions with Elysia Borowy-Reeder
Executive Director and Chief Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD)
Detroit, MI
As Executive Director and Chief Curator of the MOCAD, Elysia Borowy-Reeder plays an essential role in establishing the vision, goals, and strategic plans for the museum. Fulfilling MOCAD’s mission through close collaboration with key stakeholders, she tirelessly works to sustain the museum and to secure its permanent future in Detroit for generations to come. She joined MOCAD as Executive Director in April of 2013 and in 2019 added Chief Curator to her title. She is former Founding Director of CAM Raleigh and served in leadership positions at MCA Chicago, MAM, and SAIC. Having curated over 40, she holds two master degrees from MSU, was named a 2008 Getty Museum Leadership Fellow, and attended Yale School of Management and Antioch College. She is currently completing her National Arts Strategies with a notforprofit certificate from Harvard Business School.
1. What keeps you up at night, and then what makes you optimistic the next morning?
Currently, I am an essential employee at MOCAD so I am going in a few times a week to make sure our physical plant is in good working condition. During the shutdown, I decided to redo the onsite and online store to make sure we can earn income when we are closed. I dove into online retail and learned everything I could about Shopify – our online store platform.
Our exhibitions manager Zeb, who is also an essential employee, worked with donated store fixtures and completely revamped our onsite store. It looks outstanding! We did this upgrade back in late March thinking that we would be open mid-to-late April.
We have been rolling with two-week extensions of Michigan’s stay at home order ever since. We have been doing everything for safety, but it makes planning nonexistent. Since the pandemic hit I have been working since 7am to 9pm everyday – things haven’t slowed down for me one bit! I am worried that I can’t keep up my energy and I will make decisions out of exhaustion and not strategy for growth and future planning. I am also preparing to have the test of my career in 2021. 2021 is when the ER funds will have been all dispersed and we anticipate many gifts will be decreased by 30%. What will we do to be impactful for less? Do we need to change our program to meet our mission?
What keeps me optimistic is my Board and some of the staff that have been positive about the future. The MOCAD Board has been so supportive, calm acting, and deeply proactively thinking. I feel such an important responsibility. I don’t want to let anyone down. They can see how our “business” model can be adapted and as a whole they were so accessible and willing to share information, it was inspiring to me. They also look at more groundbreaking programs as a good fit for MOCAD, which is something that I can’t say enough about. When I mention “sound installations in vacant lots” or doing an “experimental film screening at the drive-in theater” their response has been “When? I will put it in my calendar now.”
2. What have been your priorities during these past two months of shut down? How do you best accomplish your mission and your community outreach in this current context?
I feel the weight of responsibility to keep employees employed and keep our contracts in place with artists. Beyond that I have to reach out to our community – if we do not reach out we will not be relevant to the community.
I did have some moments of despair, heavy despair – Detroit has such poverty; I am concerned that this will take a lot to recover from. And I do not hear much about recovery – it is not too soon to talk about recovery.
My first week post-shut down I developed five budget scenarios and I reached out to our strategic planner Brett Egan (President, DeVos Institute of Arts Management), who is brilliant. He is generous with his time and his expertise. He was an immediate call, but he also did a call for pro-bono services – he knew people needed actionable advice. It keeps hitting me that MOCAD is surrounded by brilliant thinkers who share thoughts and resources freely. I need to keep sharp so I can edit those ideas and resources to deploy them in a strategic way.
I also have had deep and sad thoughts from time to time. It occurred to me that we will not be having family days or Saturday workshops at MOCAD for the next year or so and I was literally sitting on a lot of high-quality art supplies. What can I do with this resource? I quickly made MOCAD Art Bags for preschoolers, pre-teens, and teens. It felt good assembling what I think was an amazing bag of art supplies. I quickly enlisted the help of the MOCAD Teen Council who then assembled a call for participants and put together a Google form, which fed into an Excel doc. This was all a learning experience for them. I think I just convinced a group of teens that Excel was their friend. They also told me about an app called PLACEMAKER that can map out multiple destinations in the more efficient way possible. I needed to find volunteers to deliver the art bags! Both Jeremiah Steen and Robert-David Jones signed on immediately from a Instagram story post, they each easily put 200 miles on their cars delivering the art bags to doorsteps. I was taken back by the need – in the first 24 hours of our call for recipients – we received 171 names! There is such a deep need in Detroit.
We are also running a program with the City of Detroit to help support our local artists. We are using our Shopify platform to do a rapid response art sale. We created the hashtag #MOCADfromhome and #therentisdue to promote the online art sales. So far, we have raised over $20,000 for our local artists.
We have also leveraged our Board members such as Derrick May, and took our discussions and music programming online using TWITCH – we ask folks to purchase a virtual ticket and were able to raise some funds.
I am a firm believer that virtual relationships are here to stay. The downside of online programming is that there is no augmented income. Working with our Director of Finance, Marie, we were able to secure a PP loan and keep staff working from home. We also decided to put 14 years of MOCAD history online and make a searchable archive of past exhibitions and past programs.
When I am in crisis, I am a task master — I expect a lot, but I also do and give a lot. At times I can get overwhelmed, but I never get stuck there. I break tasks down into smaller goals and assign like a project manager. Also, I am not afraid of technology — I expect more and more from technology. Every day we're navigating social distancing and its impact—thankfully technology and social media can give us means to stay connected virtually
3. With regards to digital programming, how are you utilizing platforms? What is working and what is not?
“Let us distract you” is my motto. I love TWITCH — it’s fun and has an online chat tool which is the engagement part. I also find the Animal Crossing Galleries very adorable and to see how all the art school students have scanned in their actual artwork – this is happening as all the BFA and MFA thesis shows have been canceled. I see these pictures on social media of viewers' home spaces and people have amazing DIY home theater spaces.
I think there is a huge difference between presence and engagement online. People still want to see art in person, people still want to see something that they have never seen before. Art is an adventure. I truly enjoy exhibition making for the experiential nature of it all. That is why I am so excited about an exhibition I am working on with Mark Handorth. He was born in Hong Kong and lives in Miami. For his solo exhibition opening in February 2021, he will be working with sculpture and light. The reason why contemporary art is fascinating is because of the relationship with the artist. That is why I talk about our mission and remain rooted in being artist driven. I also think the space between boundaries is the most interesting. The lines have been blurred between these distinctions over the last decade. I think boundaries and distinctions will continue to blur — I wonder if that is that the new model — is the remaking the model a change in distinctions?
4. MOCAD is truly embedded in its community. Is there an opportunity now for increased support of local arts ecosystems?
I always come back to what I call the two G’s – grit and glamour. Art doesn’t need glamour, glamour needs art.
Detroit has been hit so hard by this particular crisis, and we are facing a new reality for the foreseeable future. So the part about reaching out is important, so we can hear feedback about what our community needs from an art institution right now — that's what will help us continue to be a relevant “service”. This can be expressed and felt by Gerhard Richter’s quote back in 1982, “Art is the highest form of hope.” Going back to seeking what matters, I go to the MOCAD Board as a sounding board, jessica Care moore, an internationally recognized poet, can speak volumes about what she is seeing and hearing in the community. Her poem WAR speaks to the times - here are some of the lines that have stayed with me…
you can easily ignore if you're not listening
for the drip in the middle of the night
give me a reason to write
this is my vow to fight
for you lover/language breaker
american stranger/suburbanite danger
international invader/knocking on all the wrong doors
for you i am always at war
always at war
always at war
always at
war
jessica Care moore
And this is not a novel thought by any means but one I think about frequently — one reason art is truly necessary is that it can be a safe haven for unsafe ideas when things are difficult. Which is why it's important for alternative art spaces to exist and be accessible.
This incredible proliferation of venues for contemporary art has increased possibilities, as well as positive competition, with each institution needing to pay greater attention to their programming to distinguish themselves from the others — and to avoid repeating what has already been done. This emulation has a positive effect. Today, an institution that doesn’t pay attention, or that fails to do this research properly, won’t last long. It’s become so difficult to get funding that an institution has to be recognized and make a difference in order to sustain itself. Many arts organizations are hanging in the balance. I believe that soon, only institutions with flexible formats and small operating budgets will be able to exist. All the other in-between structures, I think, will disappear or become relics of the past. I believe that contemporary art is like a mirror reflecting the world back to society and is a hammer, forging culture. This is a time when we need contemporary art and artists to make sense of the world. We are running with scissors at a time when we should be walking with mirrors and hammers.
5. This crisis could change the landscape of cultural patronage. In your view, how does it most urgently need to evolve?
Limit your support to one organization rather than the small gifts to many organizations. Dedicate your time, talent and money – now is the time to double down on one organization. I have been thinking about our strengths and weaknesses a lot lately. And everyone has an opinion about this, which is why it is a great focus of conversation. I am going to ask my entire Board to chair our virtual Gala and Benefit Art Auction this year. I think this will speak volumes to the community, showing that we are confident about our mission and our future.
As Executive Director and Chief Curator of the MOCAD, Elysia Borowy-Reeder plays an essential role in establishing the vision, goals, and strategic plans for the museum. Fulfilling MOCAD’s mission through close collaboration with key stakeholders, she tirelessly works to sustain the museum and to secure its permanent future in Detroit for generations to come. She joined MOCAD as Executive Director in April of 2013 and in 2019 added Chief Curator to her title. She is former Founding Director of CAM Raleigh and served in leadership positions at MCA Chicago, MAM, and SAIC. Having curated over 40, she holds two master degrees from MSU, was named a 2008 Getty Museum Leadership Fellow, and attended Yale School of Management and Antioch College. She is currently completing her National Arts Strategies with a notforprofit certificate from Harvard Business School.