MOCA Jacksonville

ABOUT THIS PLACE

The museum began in 1924 as the Jacksonville Fine Arts Society, the first organization in the city devoted to the visual arts. It became the Jacksonville Art Museum in 1948 and was accredited by the American Alliance of Museums in 1978. In late 1999 it bought the historic Western Union Telegraph Building on what was then Hemming Plaza and is now James Weldon Johnson Park. That building is Art Deco, finished in 1931 to a design by Marsh and Saxelbye, and the museum spent until 2003 rebuilding all six floors and 60,000 square feet of it. The University of North Florida took the museum over in 2009 and runs it as a cultural institute of the university. The permanent collection is close to 800 works. The third floor carries rotating exhibitions that change roughly every four months, so the museum is worth returning to rather than seeing once. The building also holds education rooms, an auditorium, the museum shop and a cafe. It stands at 333 North Laura Street, on the trolley route and by the monorail station at the park