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Project Atrium: Nari Ward

Great Greetings

March 5 - August 16, 2026

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Project Atrium: Nari Ward, "Great Greetings", Installation view. 2026. MOCA Jacksonville. Photo by Sarah Hedden Photography.

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Great Greetings is a new exhibition which transforms MOCA Jacksonville’s Atrium into a shimmering space of gold and silver by using everyday, disposable emergency blankets. The blankets, often used for survival or post-marathon recovery, drape the Atrium’s walls and dangle overhead as pennants, enveloping viewers in gleaming metallic color. Each blanket is cut with handwritten text of everyday greeting-card categories, such as Condolences, Kids, and Thinking of You. Underneath, pink newspaper excerpts from The Financial Times evoke the role of the marketplace, exposing the contrast between mass-produced sentiments and lived emotional experiences. Expanded to monumental scale through dazzling gold-silver blankets, such prepackaged sentiments overwhelm the space, reflecting on relationships, rites of passage, and social expectations.  
 
Ward is known for his use of found objects and materials which draw out webs of narratives, meanings, and memories. Often working in sculpture and installation, he transforms the ways objects and materials are understood, imbuing them with new energy to enliven the imaginations of viewers. As with previous exhibitions by Ward, Great Greetings seeks to engage with the surrounding space, immersing viewers in transformed ways of seeing and understanding the world. The work, combining emergency blankets, greeting card sentiments, and newspaper collage, blends anxiety and overwhelm with celebration and care, inviting reflection on how language forms our interactions. 
 
Great Greetings was made in collaboration with students from the University of North Florida’s Department of Art, Art History and Design Enlivened Spaces studio course, centered on the transformative potential of installation art and its ability to activate and reimagine architectural and social space. Under the direction of Visiting Instructor Aisling Millar McDonald, students worked with Ward, helping shape the physical articulation and compositional structure of the work. 
 
Following the installation of the project, the students will develop original works in response to Ward’s installation, which will be exhibited in MOCA’s Lobby Gallery opening on April 29, 2026.  
 
Special thanks to the UNF Sculpture Seniors who assisted the artist with the project: Emily Bailey, Melanie Berends, Maya Bird, Kaliyah Chance, Matthew Green, Carter Mangle, Heaven Marshall, Sophia McGahuey, Kazuki Rocha, Kayla Sumner, Matthew Szostek, Madelyn Trythall and Hanna Vickers. 
 
Thanks also to volunteer Karmen Welch, Art Installer Leif Dickens, and Intern Sai Keerthan Panga, who assisted with the project’s installation and formulation, under the direction of MOCA Preparator Melanie Berends.

 

ABOUT PROJECT ATRIUM

Since its launch in 2011, Project Atrium has commissioned artists to create site‑specific and site‑sensitive installations that engage the museum’s public-facing architecture, inviting audiences to witness the making process and experience immersive art from multiple vantage points across three floors. The Atrium serves as a visual anchor for the entire building and a hallmark of MOCA’s commitment to bold contemporary practice. This project serves as a significant contribution to MOCA Jacksonville’s mission to promote the discovery, knowledge, and advancement of the art, artists, and ideas of our time—presenting contemporary art that provokes inquiry and fosters community connection.

Sponsors 

Exhibition Presenting Sponsor 
Florida Blue

Exhibition Sponsors 
The Cummer Family Foundation, Wende Wilson

Project Atrium Series Sponsor
Driver, McAfee, Hawthorne & Diebenow, PLLC

Portrait of artist Nari Ward in studio 

ABOUT NARI WARD

Nari Ward (b.1963, St. Andrew, Jamaica) is a Jamaican-American artist based in New York City. He is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Hunter College, where he completed a B.A. in 1991, receiving his MFA from Brooklyn College in 1992. Solo exhibitions have been hosted at Pirelli HangarBicocca in Milan (2024); at the historic Piscina Romano, Milan, curated by Massimiliano Gioni, Fondazione Nicola Trussardi (2022); Vilcek Foundation, New York (2022); the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver (2020); the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Houston, TX (2019); the New Museum, New York (2019); the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2017); Socrates Sculpture Park, New York (2017); The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia (2016); Pérez Art Museum Miami (2015); Savannah College of Art and Design Museum of Art, Savannah, GA (2015); Louisiana State University Museum of Art, Baton Rouge, LA (2014); The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia (2011); Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams, MA (2011); Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston (2002); and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN (2001, 2000).

Nari Ward is currently participating in the 2025 Taipei Biennial, Whispers on the Horizon, and the 2025 Kochi-Muziris Biennale, For the Time Being, in India, and most recently participated in the 2025 Sao Paulo Biennial, Not All Travelers Walk Roads – Of Humanity as Practice. Other group exhibitions featuring his work include Objects Like Us, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT (2018-2019); UPTOWN: nastywomen/badhombres, El Museo del Barrio, New York (2017); Black: Color, Material, Concept, The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (2015); The Great Mother, the Fondazione Nicola Trussardi, Palazzo Reale, Milan (2015); The Freedom Principle: Experiments in Art and Music, 1965 to Now, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2015); NYC 1993: Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star, New Museum, New York (2013); Contemplating the Void: Interventions in the Guggenheim Rotunda, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2010); the Whitney Biennial, New York (2006); and Landings, Documenta XI, Kassel, Germany (2003).

Ward has received numerous honors and distinctions such as the Joyce Award, The Joyce Foundation, Chicago (2015), and the Rome Prize, American Academy of Rome (2012), and awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the National Endowment for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation. Ward has also received commissions from the United Nations and the World Health Organization.

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