Downtown Madison, Wisconsin keeps its independent, non-profit art museum right here: the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art. Here the city keeps a steady conversation with modern and contemporary art: MMoCA is dedicated to exhibiting, collecting, and preserving modern and contemporary art, and its mission is to educate and inspire by means of rotating permanent collection exhibitions, special exhibitions, a film series, and educational programming. This organization is one of Madison’s oldest cultural institutions: it began as the Madison Art Association in 1901, presented education programs and exhibitions in borrowed spaces, then in 1964 leased the former Lincoln School on Lake Mendota and merged with the Madison Art Foundation to become the Madison Art Center.
In 1980 the Art Center moved into the Madison Civic Center; in 2003 the name changed to the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art to reflect its mission. You are standing at the museum’s current home, opened here adjacent to the Overture Center for the Arts on April 23, 2006; both MMoCA and the Overture Center were designed by architect César Pelli. Look now to the Overture Center for the Arts beside you.