MOCA debuted its Arata Isozaki-designed Grand Avenue location with the exhibition Individuals: A Selected History of Contemporary Art, 1945-1986, installed across both the new building and the Temporary Contemporary, MOCA’s existing gallery space. The exhibition presented artworks by seventy-seven artists representing major movements in contemporary Western art, including Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism, Post-Minimalism, and Pop Art.
Each of the seventy-seven artists in Individuals were represented either by a grouping of works or a major installation. The exhibition “began” in the Grand Avenue building with a genealogy of modern artists from Abstract Expressionism to Minimalism. They included Louise Bourgeois, Joseph Cornell, Helen Frankenthaler, Eva Hesse, Willem de Kooning, Brice Marden, Agnes Martin, Louise Nevelson, Barnett Newman, Isamu Noguchi, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Frank Stella.
More contemporary artists were installed at The Temporary Contemporary and included Joseph Beuys, Anselm Kiefer, Martin Puryear, Lucas Samaras, and others. Two paradigmatic Minimalists were also separated between MOCA Grand Avenue and The Temporary Contemporary with works by Dan Flavin in the former and Donald Judd in the latter. Finally, a large group of artists who used or examined pop culture in their work was presented solely at The Temporary Contemporary. They included John Baldessari, Marcel Broodthaers, Mike Kelley, Edward Kienholz, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg, Edward Ruscha, Cindy Sherman, and Andy Warhol among others.
Four solo exhibitions of contemporary artists traveled to The Temporary Contemporary as part of MOCA’s “Inaugural Year” programming, extending the historical scope of Individuals into the more immediate present. They included Francesco Clemente (February 10 – March 29, 1987); David Salle (April 21 – June 14, 1987); Elizabeth Murray 1976–1986 (July 28 – September 20, 1987); and Donald Sultan (November 24, 1987 – January 10, 1988).
The exhibition was accompanied by a catalogue.