A New Curator Arrives at the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami

In February, the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami (MOCA) announced it had appointed Adeze Wilford as its curator. A former assistant curator at the Shed, the cultural center in Manhattan's Hudson Yards, the New York City native was hired four years after Chana Sheldon came on as MOCA's executive director.

With Wilford’s appointment, Sheldon says she's optimistic about the museum’s ability to “deepen our work within the community.”

“As Adeze comes in, she is going to deepen that work for the museum, for our community,” Wilford tells New Times. “It's always amazing when we have new territorial voices in the Miami community in general, and we’re looking forward to connecting her with our regional artists.”

In her role, Wilford will lead the curatorial department’s program of exhibitions and highlight underexplored artists and movements, including solo shows for emerging artists. She'll also oversee the museum’s permanent collection and public-art initiatives and spearhead a guest curator program, which Sheldon cites as an initiative meant to platform unique and diverse voices.

"That is really what I have been interested in and what I've wanted to build my career in — working in museums with incredible collections," Wilford says.

She also points to her extensive museum background as a reason she's excited to return to a traditional exhibition space.

Originally from Harlem, Wilford moved to Westchester County at a young age where she developed a deep interest in the arts thanks to her parents’ memberships at local museums. While majoring in art history and African-American studies at Northwestern University, she became the director of the university’s student-run gallery and worked as an exhibitions assistant at the campus museum before returning to New York City, where she spent a year working at the Studio Museum in Harlem.

She moved on to working for the Museum of Modern Art’s film collection before arriving at the Shed while it was still under construction. A nonprofit cultural center that commissions and produces a wide range of artistic endeavors in different mediums, the Shed allowed her to witness an art institution quite literally being built from the ground up. During her time there, Wilford curated the New York Times-acclaimed exhibition “Howardena Pindell: Rope/Fire/Water."

“How a museum chooses to build its collection and how it chooses to support artists through the acquisition of their work and through the care and keeping of their work — that is something that has been really valuable to me,” Wilford explains. “The Shed was an incredible opportunity to work with artists who are realizing ideas that they’ve had, but I’m excited to have a long-standing engagement with an artwork — with an artist.”

The North Miami museum is known for its commitment to spotlighting unrepresented communities in the visual arts. MOCA's diverse curation has previously spotlighted artists like AfriCOBRA, a Black artist collective that, despite its notable contributions to the Black Arts movement of the 1960s and '70s, had never had a large-scale exhibition dedicated to their work. Its current show, a monographic presentation of decades' worth of paintings, sculptures, drawings, and films by the provocative, Polish-born artist Maryan, also included many works that had never before been presented or even published.

Sheldon says the museum has been building its leadership team internally since her arrival. The ability to dedicate a full-time staff member to the team comes with support from the Knight Foundation.

“This is a very exciting moment for MOCA,” Sheldon adds. “To bring on this new team member, to bring this new team member into the Miami community, and continue to contribute to our ever-growing and exciting contemporary art landscape in South Florida.”

Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami. 770 NE 125th St., North Miami; 305-893-6211; mocanomi.org.