CLEVELAND, Ohio — In the wake of a year of race-related controversies over exhibitions and internal practices, the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland said Wednesday it has installed new board members and appointed three new co-presidents to succeed former board President Larry Oscar.
The museum issued a news release saying its board of directors unanimously voted July 29 to make the changes.
“This evolved diverse leadership framework goes beyond creating seats at the table,’’ newly appointed Co-President Audra T. Jones said in the news release. “It allows for equitable conversation, decision making, listening, and a diversity of perspectives that are unprecedented in MOCA’s history.”
Jones, the museum’s first Black co-president, is the founder and CEO of Krystal Klear Communications, a communications consulting firm.
The other two new co-presidents are Joanne Cohen and Stephen G. Sokany.
Cohen is a consultant for the healthcare and education sector of Museum Exchange, a digital platform that connects donors of art with North American museums, and the former head of the Cleveland Clinic Art Program, which she established.
Sokany is the principal and founder Sokany Strategic Consulting LLC, a firm that specializes in donor relations, campaign management, and management and governance of non-profit institutional boards. He is also the executive director of the West 117 Foundation. The museum described Sokany as its first LGBTQ board co-President.
The museum also announced the names of six new board members: F. Allen Boseman, Jr., Katy Dix Brahler, Rafael Hernández-Brito, Nicole Finley, Jonathan Kurtz, Nadya Scheiner.
The museum said the new members “represent a wider array of Cleveland communities and professional sectors,’’ apparently indicating a wider representation than the museum previously had on its board.
“A refreshed board leadership structure allows MOCA to move forward with a unique and bolder lens centered fully on artists, audiences, and equity,’’ the museum said.
The new co-presidents will serve a two-year term. Oscar will continue to serve as a board member.
Earlier this year, MOCA announced it was seeking a new executive director to succeed interim Executive Director Megan Lykins Reich, who was appointed after former director Jill Snyder stepped down last year.
MOCA Cleveland is a non-collecting institution established in 1968 that focuses on cutting-edge contemporary art.
The new oversight structure at MOCA follows a turbulent year. Last June, New York artist Shaun Leonardo accused the museum of censoring him after it canceled an exhibition of his drawings of police killings of unarmed Black men and boys.
Snyder stepped down as director shortly after news of the cancellation surfaced.
In May this year, the museum announced that it had canceled its participation in “The Regional,’’ a national touring exhibition it co-organized with two other museums. The museum said it was withdrawing to “continue developing an equity-centered culture.’’
At the time, MOCA was holding an exhibition organized by La Tanya Autry, who had just completed a stint as a curatorial fellow at the museum.
A text panel in the exhibition said the show was intended to envision “possibilities beyond MOCA Cleveland’s consistent anti-Black practices” and that it was offered as a “hopefully significant prodding for an authentic, community-led institutional reckoning.’’
The museum has not explained what it meant by “anti-Black practices,’’ or how it intends to change and measure progress.
Reich is quoted on Wednesday’s news release as saying: “Our desire to be in deeper, collaborative discourse with artists and art lovers from a diversity of backgrounds continues to demonstrate itself through a board that is critically engaged in the hard work of institutional change.’’
“We will continue to evolve - alongside other museums nationally—and as we move forward, our museum will be dynamically responsive to the people we serve. We are becoming a more equitable space of belonging for everyone to engage with art,” Reich said in the news release.
Reich could not be reached for comment Wednesday.