Miami MoCAAD Turns Ten and Overtown Still Sings

Historic Overtown’s business district was once the cultural and economic heart of Black Miami. Source: Overtownmusicfestival.com

By Llerraj Esuod

A Horn, a Prayer, and an Echo in Overtown

Imagine standing on Northwest Second Avenue as a trombone cries into the humid air. William Bilal’s imagined solo of Al Jarreau’s “Black and Blues” rises like a prayer — a wail in beautiful pain that asks the same question Mahalia Jackson once sang: How I Got Over?

That question still wanders down Third Avenue, through alleys and back streets of Overtown, even as glass towers rise where juke joints once swayed. For ten years, the Miami Museum of Contemporary Art of the African Diaspora has kept that echo alive, turning memory into art and technology into testimony.

Building a Movement, Not Just a Museum

“When we first envisioned the museum, it wasn’t just about building a museum,” said Marilyn Holifield, attorney and co-founder. “It was about creating a movement and connecting communities to preserve, document, and celebrate the creativity of the African diaspora and the mother continent, Africa. Over time, that vision has evolved from an improbable idea into a living, breathing ecosystem that connects communities, art, technology, and innovation.”

What began as an improbable idea is now part of Overtown’s story. It lives on the same streets where Black Miami built its cultural heart.

Murals That Hold Memory

MoCAAD’s interactive mural program turns public walls into digital archives. Each mural carries a QR code that unlocks oral histories and virtual exhibits featuring the voices of people who built the neighborhood and refused to vanish as the city changed.

When Walls Speak: Digital Archives Come Alive

A MoCAAD interactive mural, part of the museum’s growing digital-archive initiative connecting art with oral history. Photo Credit: MocCAAD

To mark its tenth year, the institution will unveil two major exhibitions. “Telling Overtown Stories, Saying Their Names” honors the neighborhood’s legacy through interactive murals and oral histories. “Looking Forward,” curated by N’Namdi Contemporary Fine Art, gathers five artists of the African diaspora: Mark Delmont, Stephen Arboite, Maxwell Pearce, Sidney Blu, and Samuel Nnorom, whose work explores identity, migration, and renewal through digital and physical media.

A New Home for the Next Chapter

MoCAAD’s next chapter will anchor those experiences in a permanent home inside the repurposed Women’s Detention Center. With support from the City of Miami’s Overtown Community Redevelopment Agency and Miami-Dade County, the organization plans to turn this former site of confinement into a vibrant center for imagination and learning.

“We’re turning a site once associated with confinement into a place of art, innovation, and imagination,” Holifield said. “Being across from a high school and near several elementary schools sends a powerful message that young people’s stories, their art, and their futures matter.”

Reclaiming Visibility, Reimagining the Future

For Holifield, art is reclamation. “It’s powerful to see the center’s presence at Art Basel because it represents a shift in what visibility and equity in the art world can look like,” she said. “Our presence bridges worlds: the global and the local, the institutional and the community-rooted.”

The Echo That Never Fades

As Bilal’s imagined horn fades and the murals catch the last light, Overtown stirs with memory, a hymn of survival and grace. How we got over is the refrain. Through the museum, the answer keeps playing.