MOCA NoMi slays the “competition” in settlement

To all those people out there who believed MOCA was dead and buried, and especially to artnet.com reporter Sarah Cascone, who stupidly referred to it as “the LATE Museum of Contemporary Art,” I have four little words for you…

I TOLD YOU SO!

Oh, yeah. That felt good.

Those of us who knew all along that the City of North Miami would prevail in its battle against the former board of trustees are not surprised. When the trustees filed their lawsuit against the city last April for Breach of Contract and Declaratory Relief, among other frivolous accusations, it was an obvious CYA reaction to being publicly outed for secretly conspiring to move the museum’s private collection to the Bass Museum of Art in Miami Beach.

The court ordered settlement negotiations, which began last summer, finally came to a resolution earlier this month. According to a Miami Herald article posted this afternoon, MOCA to retain about 70 percent of artworks, the details of the settlement are:

About 500 of the 709 works held by the Museum of Contemporary Art’s previous incarnation will stay with MOCA, while 205 will go to the new Institute of Contemporary Art created by its former board members, according to an agreement that will go before the North Miami City Council at its Tuesday meeting.

According to the terms of the agreement, two works by Afro-Caribbean-influenced artist Jose Bedia will stay with MOCA, while two by pop artist John Baldessari will go to ICA. All 20 works by Miami-based Pablo Cano and two by the late street artist Keith Harring will stay with MOCA, while two works by Ana Mendieta and one by British artist Tracey Emin — who solo show was an Art Basel highlight in 2013 — will go to ICA.

Multiple works by artists include Daniel Arsham, Bhakti Baxter, William Cordova, Lynne Golob Gelfman, Mark Handforth, Gabriel Orozco, Ed Ruscha and Robert Rauschenberg will be split between the two institutions, according to the agreement.

However, if MOCA requires any specific pieces to keep its accreditation with the American Alliance of Museums, those works will be given back or the sides can return to litigation.

Also, in addition to about $1 million in grant money, North Miami gets to keep…

THE RIGHTS TO THE “MOCA” NAME!

Guess what?

I TOLD YOU SO!

North Miami also gets to keep the rights to “the nonprofit organization Moca, Inc.,” the MOCA logo, the website mocanomi.org (previously hijacked by the former trustees), and the program “Women on the Rise.”

The former trustees get to keep “intellectual property rights” over pictures …

Of themselves.

Yeah, I just hurt myself laughing, too.

They get to keep some other stuff, too, but the bottom line is that by trying to pull a fast one on the City of North Miami, they shot themselves in the collective foot.

But, hey! They got pictures of themselves!

The North Miami City Council will vote on a Resolution to approve the settlement agreement, which you can read in its entirety by clicking here.