Brooklyn’s MoCADA Is Asking Its Community for Help

By Jamilah King Jul 25, 2014

Brooklyn’s Museum of Contemporary African Diasporic Arts is facing hard times. James E. Bartlett, the institution’s executive director, made the following appeal this week to ask community members for support to help it stay afloat:

We’ve been lucky to have the support of so many fantastic foundations over the years, and we are very grateful for their ongoing commitment to cultural arts. Our funders are model philanthropists who continue to stand by our growth and innovation. But it is not enough to rely on foundations and government grants to stay afloat. We are in danger because we are a small, Black organization and wealth inequality continues to be a very real challenge in the community we serve. We operate without an endowment or major individual donors, making us vulnerable to funding cuts. If a funder decides they no longer want to support the arts (as often occurs), we have to cut free programming, or even staff. That’s why we’re asking you to take action now.

The museum, which was founded in 1999, has set up a fundraising page in an effort to raise the funds.