The galleries at the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami went dark on Monday, Oct. 5, and the reason is worth the wait. Crews are installing the museum's next show, and the only one on its upcoming calendar is Geoffrey Holder: Black Magic, which MOCA describes as the first museum survey to put the Trinidad-born artist's paintings, drawings, collages and sculpture at the center of his story. It is scheduled to run from Nov. 11, 2026, through April 5, 2027, at the museum's building on NE 125th Street.

The Artist Most People Know for Something Else

For Broadway audiences, Holder is the man behind The Wiz. The Museum of the City of New York, which holds his work in its collection, records that the 1975 production ran for 1,672 performances and won seven Tony Awards, two of them his, for direction and for costume design. He was a dancer and choreographer before that, making his Broadway debut in House of Flowers, and he went on to a long career in theater and film.

What gets lost in that résumé is that painting came first. Holder was born on Aug. 1, 1930, in Port of Spain, the youngest of five children of Barbadian immigrants, and the same museum's account credits his older brother Boscoe with guiding him into painting, dancing and costume making as a boy. By 1952 he had taken over his brother's dance and music company. He kept painting throughout everything that followed, until his death in 2014 at 84.

What MOCA Is Putting on the Walls

According to the museum's exhibition page, the show gathers more than 60 works across painting, drawing, collage and sculpture, and many of them have never been shown in public. The material is grouped into five themes: Portraits, Epistles, The Sacred and the Profane, Genre, and Figure Studies. Expect biblical scenes recast with a modern eye, portraits painted from memory, landscapes and still lifes in heavy, saturated color. One of the images MOCA has released, Man in Black, a 1991 oil on board lent by a private collector, gives a sense of the scale of gesture involved.

The organizing idea is that the body, as a choreographer sees it, runs through all of the visual work. A dancer who designs costumes and then directs whole productions thinks about figures in motion, and the exhibition is built to show that his canvases were where that thinking started, not a side hobby.

The guest curator is Erica Moiah James, PhD.

Why This Show Is Landing in North Miami

MOCA is marking three decades in its current home this year. The museum began in 1981 as the Center of Contemporary Art, and in 1996 it moved into the Charles Gwathmey-designed building at 770 NE 125th St., built with support from the City of North Miami. The museum frames the Holder show as part of its Miami Art Week season, the stretch each winter when collectors and curators from around the world spread out across Miami-Dade. A first-ever survey of a famous name, mostly unseen work, opening in a city-funded museum on 125th Street, gives North Miami a genuine reason to be on that map rather than a stop on the way to Miami Beach.

What Is Still Open While You Wait

The galleries are closed, but the museum is not. Carrington Ware's Home Spun, a series of autobiographical textile flags about growing up in Georgia, is up on the outdoor plaza through 5 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 11, so this weekend is the last chance to see it.

On Saturday, Oct. 10, at 1 p.m., the monthly MOCA Makers class, part of the museum's free adult art program on the second Saturday of each month, turns to incense. Artist Emmy Etienne will walk participants through making their own incense cones from frankincense, myrrh, woods, spices and dried flowers, and the museum notes that spaces are limited, so sign up ahead.

Later in the month, the plaza hosts Jazz at MOCA on Friday, Oct. 30, with pianist Mike Gerber's quartet. The museum bills the series, running on the last Friday of the month since 1999, as South Florida's longest-running free outdoor jazz concert, with seating at 7 p.m. and music at 8.

Plan Your Visit

When the galleries reopen, regular museum hours are noon to 7 p.m. on Wednesdays and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursday through Sunday, closed Monday and Tuesday. The building sits on 125th Street in downtown North Miami, an easy stop to pair with lunch along the same corridor.

For residents of North Miami, Biscayne Park and the neighborhoods off 125th, the real news is that the most interesting art opening on the calendar this fall is not across the bay. It is down the street, and it is about a Trinidad-born artist whose best-known work happened on a stage, finally getting a full hearing for what he did with a brush.