MoCADA Museum

MoCADA Museum Exploring the arts, education, and social justice through the lens of Africa & the Diaspora.
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The Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts (MoCADA) is committed to creating a greater awareness and appreciation of the relevance of the African Diaspora as it relates to contemporary urban issues through innovative exhibitions, public programs and educational interactive tours.

09/03/2026

🎬📢 Join us Friday, September 4 for a special, free community screening of "True North: Canadian Myths and Black Power,"  a powerful documentary by Michèle Stephenson on Montréal’s Civil Rights Movement.

Through never-before-seen archives and the voices of those who lived through the tumultuous period of 1960s Montreal, "True North" explores pivotal events that shaped the global movement for Black liberation by centering the Congress of Black Writers and the Sir George Williams Affair.

"True North" interweaves accounts of a little-known historical chapter in the Black Power movement that impacted the struggle for Black liberation across the globe and resonates with today’s movements for change.

WHAT: Film Screening: “True North: Canadian Myths and Black Power”

DATE/TIME: Friday, September 4, 2026 @ 6:30pm – 9:30pm

LOCATION: MoCADA Culture Lab II, 10 Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn, 11217

The film will be followed by a Q&A with the director. Limited seats are available. RSVP to reserve your spot. Link in bio. ❤️🖤💚✊🏾

09/02/2026

We are heartbroken to learn that the incomparable Jazz singer Cassandra Wilson has passed. As we reflect on her legacy and iconic voice, we couldn't help but return to her 1997 classic, "You Move Me," from the 'Love Jones' soundtrack.

Here's Ms. Wilson performing the song on April 30, 2017, which was recorded live in Havana, Cuba for the annual International Jazz Day celebration.

Rest in paradise, Cassandra Wilson. Our prayers and love go out to her loved ones. ❤️🖤💚💐🕊️

📹: "You Move Me” featuring Cassandra Wilson (vocals), Harold López-Nussa (piano), Jorge Reyes (acoustic bass), Carl Allen (drums), Marc Antoine (guitar), and Yaroldy Abreu (congas), recorded live in Havana.

This work, entitled "Bokoko" (Culture) by Congolese artist Esther Mido (Esther Mido) uses traditional symbols such as be...
08/29/2026

This work, entitled "Bokoko" (Culture) by Congolese artist Esther Mido (Esther Mido) uses traditional symbols such as beads and textiles to validate African beauty. The subject, a young Congolese woman, is torn about her identity. She is African — as represented through her Congolese passport and the traditional mask — while also hiding from her identity. The artist calls on the young woman to recognize her worth and beauty from within her own traditions.

🎨: "Bokoko" by Esther Mido, 2024. Acrylic on canvas, 50 × 41 7/10 inches

See this work in person, which is currently on view within the "Pitch Black: Haiti and Congo Revisited" exhibition at MoCADA until October 11.

Many thanks to Article 15 Gallery in Washington, DC for making this work available to MoCADA!

❤️🖤💚

Unfortunately due to rain, we are postponing today's event! Join us on the new date and time on September 26! Link to RS...
08/22/2026

Unfortunately due to rain, we are postponing today's event!

Join us on the new date and time on September 26! Link to RSVP in bio.

08/19/2026

Join us Saturday, August 22 for a conversation with Franck F. Deceus (Francks F Deceus) on home, reconciling the emotional and social effects of immigration, and what it means to be Haitian artist right now. He will be joined by Régine M. Roumain, the Executive Director of Haiti Cultural Exchange (Haiti Cultural Exchange).

This event will be followed by a walking tour to Haiti Cultural Exchange to learn more about their forthcoming exhibition in collaboration with the Archive of Alan Lomax (1915-2002). A pioneering ethnomusicologist, Lomax, at at the urging of heralded African American anthropologist and author Zora Neale Hurston,  traveled to Haiti to record the nation’s music and rituals on behalf of the US Library of Congress.

WHAT: Artist Talk: Francks Deceus + Haitian Art Walking Tour
WHEN: Saturday, August 22 @ 3:00 pm - 5:00 pm
WHERE: MoCADA Ubuntu Botanical Garden, 48 Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn, 11217

* In case of rain, the event will originate at MoCADA Cultural Lab II Cafe at 10 Lafayette Avenue, 2nd floor.

RSVP link in bio. ❤️🖤💚🇭🇹🎨

🎬:
This is made possible thanks to generous support from NYC Department of Cultural Affairs () CDF Fund.

🎬📢 It’s Black August, so we’re uplifting films rooted in the Black radical tradition all month long.Join us Sunday, Augu...
08/12/2026

🎬📢 It’s Black August, so we’re uplifting films rooted in the Black radical tradition all month long.

Join us Sunday, August 16 for a special, free community screening of True North: Canadian Myths and Black Power,  a powerful documentary by Michèle Stephenson on Montréal’s Civil Rights Movement.

Through never-before-seen archives and the voices of those who lived through the tumultuous period of 1960s Montreal, True North explores pivotal events that shaped the global movement for Black liberation by centering the Congress of Black Writers and the Sir George Williams Affair.

True North interweaves accounts of a little-known historical chapter in the Black Power movement that impacted the struggle for Black liberation across the globe and resonates with today’s movements for change.

WHAT: Film Screening: “True North: Canadian Myths and Black Power”
DATE/TIME: Sunday, August 16, 2026 @ 4pm – 7pm
LOCATION: MoCADA Culture Lab II, 10 Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn, 11217

The film will be followed by a Q&A with the director. Limited seats are available. RSVP to reserve your spot. Link in bio.

❤️🖤💚✊🏾

Mapping the space between islands, histories, and identities, this work entitled “Shipwreck/Ambaglo” by Vladimir Cybil C...
08/06/2026

Mapping the space between islands, histories, and identities, this work entitled “Shipwreck/Ambaglo” by Vladimir Cybil Charlier, imagines the Caribbean as a living constellation where ancestral knowledge, migration, and cultural exchange continue to shape new worlds. At its center, Queen Marie-Louise, embodied as La Reine Congo, stands at the crossroads, inviting us to contemplate the choices that define our collective future and to consider a return to ancestral knowledge not as a retreat into the past, but as a path forward.

“Shipwreck/Ambaglo” by Vladimir Cybil Charlier, 2021-2026. Latex paint on wall. Site specific painting first envisioned via commission by Hunter East Gallery at the San Francisco Art Institute. Evolved for MoCADA.

Now on view in the "Pitch Black: Haiti and Congo Revisited" exhibition at MoCADA. Plan your visit. Link in bio.

08/05/2026

📢: "Afro-Punk," the award winning 67-minute documentary film directed by James Spooner, is back in NYC for a special screening on Thursday, August 6. And we've got a limited number of free tickets! 🎫✨

The film, which was the precursor to the festival of the same name (minus the hyphen), focuses on the lives of four African Americans dedicated to the punk rock lifestyle, interspersed with interviews from a chorus of over 80 Black punks from throughout the United States. It tackles several universal topics around Black identity: in*******al dating, marginalization, the double consciousness of Black Americans, resistance, and notions of what it means to be Black. "Afro-Punk" the documentary features performances by Bad Brains, Tamar-kali, Cipher, and Ten Grand.

What: "Afro-Punk" documentary film screening
When: Thursday, August 6 @ 7pm
Where: Nitehawk Cinema Williamsburg, 136 Metropolitan Ave, Brooklyn

🎟️: Want tickets? DM us while supplies last! Tickets will be available on a first come, first serve basis.

Ps. Did we mention that James Spooner is speaking at MoCADA this Friday to celebrate the release of his new book? RSVP LINK in bio.

❤️🖤💚🎸✊🏾

Losing a phenom as great as Betye Saar just days before her centennial is beyond devastating. She was, as her work conti...
07/28/2026

Losing a phenom as great as Betye Saar just days before her centennial is beyond devastating. She was, as her work continues to be,"an active resuscitator" of Black life. We will miss her greatly.

🎨: "The Sound of Water," by Betye Saar, 1999
Monoprint in colors, on wove paper (full sheet)

❤️🖤💚🕊️Rest in Power, Mama Saar,

Excerpts from various writings on Saar:

"Betye Saar’s work coalesces the “personal” with the “political”, utilizing the intimacy of nostalgia and assemblage to address social inequalities and cultural issues. An instrumental participant in many 20th century artistic moments – including the Black Arts Movement of the 1970s and feminist art – Saar began creating politically-charged collages and assemblages after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968. Since then, her art has tackled the realities of racism and sexism and has been a mode of processing outrage.

By integrating an experimentation “with dead objects, with things that people have thrown away: old photographs, and so on,” Saar has said, her work delivers a transformative experience. "My work is at the crossroads between death and rebirth. Discarded materials have been recycled, so they’re born anew, because the artist has the power to do that.” —Betye Saar

In The Sound of Water (featured here), Saar's work converges many important facets of her career.

This piece is part of a 1999 element series that personifies the four main elements of nature with the female body and expands on her 1988 non-embodied element series made on silk banners. With its deckled edges and texture from luscious layers of ink, the wove paper resembles cloth, a material that has been present in Saar’s work for decades. For her, cloth represents women’s labor as a historically overlooked source of creative ingenuity, as well as disposability and change. Similar to her first major work, Black Girls Window, made thirty years prior, the only distinguishable feature the anonymous figure (which asserts Saar's voice in the feminist discussion on oppression) has are her eyes, although now they are gazing up, possibly with hope for a better future.".

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