Breathing room.
That’s what the Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville has after receiving a $185,000 grant from the Jessie Ball duPont Fund.
The three-year grant will contribute to establishing a sustainable base of funding for the museum’s exhibition program, said MOCA spokeswoman Denise Reagan.
“It’s a little cushion,” she said. “It will help us begin to cultivate donors for future exhibitions.”
The duPont Fund grant isn’t the first this year for the museum. In January, contemporary art collector Preston Haskell added $5 million to the museum’s endowment, elevating it to $6 million.
“It’s never had much of an endowment. What I’ve done is just a starter kit,” Haskell said when he presented the gift.
In 2012, the museum was recognized with a $75,000 grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. The grant supports the “Project Atrium” series of exhibits. The 12th installation, a paper sculpture by German artist Angela Glajcar, opens March 17.
Since 2011, the museum’s contributed income has risen more than 40 percent.
Over the past three years, the museum has presented more than 30 self-curated exhibitions.
Some have been exhibited by other institutions after their debut in Jacksonville, including “Shared Vision,” an exhibit of photographs from the Sondra Gilman and Celso Gonzalez-Falla collection that toured in 2014. “The Art of Seating: 200 years of American Design,” is on tour through 2016.
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