Golden: Fifty Years of New Classics
MAIN LEVEL AND LOWER LEVEL GALLERIES
Featured artists: Merryn Omotayo Alaka, Wendy Babcox, Andrea Chung, Lily Cox-Richard, Ann Fessler, Steven Frost, Anne Hancock, Walter Kravitz, Jackie Milad, Jefferson Pinder, Michael B. Platt, and Katarina Wong
Curated by Al Miner
Museum of Contemporary Art Arlington is proud to present Golden: Fifty Years of New Classics, an exhibition celebrating the organization’s 50th anniversary.
In 1974 a group of local artists formed the Community Arts Council of Arlington; two years later they moved into a historic school building, transforming the unused classrooms into studios and exhibition spaces. Over fifty years’ time, through decades of change and growth, the organization has launched many careers and sparked critical dialogue by presenting the art of our time.
In Golden: Fifty Years of New Classics, artists who’ve exhibited at MoCA Arlington in each of the five decades of its existence display mostly never-before-exhibited works that represent a range of styles and address an array of pressing topics. The exhibition highlights MoCA Arlington’s legacy of presenting and supporting the work of artists who shaped the regional arts scene. It also foregrounds the organization’s broad influence by including new work by artists whose initial engagement with MoCA Arlington came at pivotal, early moments in their careers. They have since gone on to build influential and enduring artistic careers around the region and across the country, a testament to the organization’s history as a launchpad for new talent.
ABOUT THE CURATOR
Al Miner is an award-winning curator, educator, and museum administrator based in Washington, DC. Miner is currently Deputy Director for Museum Experience and Digital Media at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. He recently served as Founding Director & Chief Curator of Georgetown University’s art galleries where he was also Associate Professor of graduate museum studies. Miner previously served as a curator at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Smithsonian Institution’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. He has authored three books and organized dozens of exhibitions, which have been reviewed widely in publications including The New York Times. Miner has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, The American Alliance of Museums, and other organizations.
RELATED EVENTS
Art After Hours
Saturday / June 15 / 5pm-8pm
Curator Tours
with MoCA Arlington Curator of Exhibitions Blair Murphy
Wednesday / August 7 / 1pm – 2pm
Friday, August 23 / 1pm – 2pm
Curator Tour with Guest Curator Al Miner
Sunday / September 8 / 12pm
DOWNLOAD THE PUBLICATION
MoCA Arlington: The First Fifty Years + Golden: Fifty Years of New Classics
Golden: Fifty Years of New Classics. Photo by Vivian Marie Doering. 
Jackie Milad, Se Van Todo (1) (left) and More Undoing (right), 2024. Photo by Vivian Marie Doering. 
Katarina Wong, Untitled (Piso 4), 2016 (left), Untitled (Piso 2), 2016 (center) and Andrea Chung, However The Image Enters Its Force Remains Within My Eyes III, V, VII, and VIII, 2023 (right). Photo by Vivian Marie Doering.
Merryn Omotayo Alaka, I look to you when I look to come home, 2023 (left), I carry the house of my father, 2023 (center), and Steven Frost, Mile High Pride Flag, 2020 (right). Photo by Vivian Marie Doering. 
Lily Cox-Richard, Offering Bundle 10: cast brass and spells on granite, 2024 (left), and Soft Fists Insist 7, 2022 (right). Photo by Vivian Marie Doering. 
Wendy Babcox, AMAZONEION No. 1, 2023 (left) and AMAZONEION No. 2, 2023 (right). Photo by Vivian Marie Doering. 
Ann Fessler, The Things He Gave Me and The Things I Took, 2024. Photo by Vivian Marie Doering. 
Jefferson Pinder, Transcendence, 2022. Photo by Vivian Marie Doering. 
Michael B. Platt, Yellow Marks in the Wall, 2005 (left) and Piano Player, 1991 (right). Photo by Vivian Marie Doering. 
Walter Kravitz, Resurrection of the Common Man (left) and Finding the Black Hole (right), 2021. Photo by Vivian Marie Doering.
