The Permanent Collection
MOCA Jacksonville primarily collects work from 1960 to the present. The Museum’s permanent collection currently consists of almost 800 works of art, including painting, printmaking, sculpture, and photography. Artists represented in the collection include Hans Hoffman, Alexander Calder, Alex Katz, Robert Longo, Helen Frankenthaler, Robert Rauschenberg, Paul Jenkins, Jules Olitski, Philip Pearlstein, Jim Dine, James Rosenquist, and Joan Mitchell. MOCA Jacksonville endeavors to create a permanent collection of significant depth, scope, and quality to be used for study, scholarly research, and exhibition – all tools that foster an education, awareness and experience with contemporary visual art.
Collection Highlight
One highlighted work from the collection is Ed Paschke’s Malibu. Born in Chicago, Paschke was allied with the Chicago Imagists who emerged in the 1960s, including artists such as Jim Nutt, Roger Brown, and Gladys Nilsson. He studied painting at the school of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he received his BFA in 1961 and MFA in 1970. As a child, Paschke showed an interest in animation that perhaps prefigured his affinity for Pop imagery when it emerged in the 1960s. Paschke produced provocative portraits and paintings strongly influenced by media imagery with colors that range from fluorescent hues of green and yellow, to darker, edgier tones. In the 1970s and 1980s, his portraits became more abstract: vacant eyes and mouths took the place of realistic faces, their ghostly shapes overlaid with abstract designs. Paschke was also interested in electronic media and new technology, and in Malibu, his use of electric, glowing color and the suggestion of a wavering screen are all references to the influential film, video, computers, and television of the 1980s.