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MOCRA's mission

Saint Louis University’s Museum of Contemporary Religious Art (MOCRA) is the world’s first museum of interfaith contemporary art. Officially opened in 1993, MOCRA is dedicated to the ongoing dialogue between contemporary artists and the world’s faith traditions. Located in a spacious chapel that was used for over 35 years by Jesuits studying philosophy at Saint Louis University, MOCRA offers a unique setting for the display of its permanent collection and changing exhibitions. MOCRA’s exhibitions have demonstrated the range of contemporary religious artistic expression, presenting the work of artists of local, regional, and national stature. In just its first seven years, MOCRA has earned the respect and admiration of the mainstream art world in America and abroad. It has received critical acclaim in the local and national media, including the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Art News, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Art Journal, the San Jose Mercury News, The Los Angeles Times, Austin American-Statesman, and The New York Times.

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1993
Sanctuaries: Recovering the Holy in Contemporary Art
Body and Soul: The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater

1994
Georges Rouault: Miserere et Guerre, the complete series of etchings
Post-Minimalism and the Spiritual: Four Chicago Artists
Consecrations: The Spiritual in Art in the Time of AIDS

1995
Keith Haring: The Life of Christ Altarpiece
Ian Friend: The Edge of Belief
Eleanor Dickinson: A Retrospective

1996
Frederick J. Brown: The Life of Christ Altarpiece
Edward Boccia: Eye of the Painter

1997
Steven Heilmer: Pietre Sante
Utopia Body Paint
Manfred Stumpf: Enter Jerusalem

1998
Tobi Kahn: Metamorphoses
MOCRA: The First Five Years

1999
Bernard Maisner: Entrance to the Scriptorium
(a MOCRA-organized twenty-five-year retrospective of that artist’s paintings and illuminated manuscripts, traveled to five cities across the country and received enthusiastic reviews in The Los Angeles Times and The Austin Chronicle)

2000
Georges Rouault: Miserere et Guerre, the complete series of etchings
Lewis DeSoto: Paranirvana
Robert Farber: A Retrospective, 1985-1995

2001
Andy Warhol: Silver Clouds
(the first in St. Louis and largest ever U.S. installation)MOCRA was featured in the July 2001 issue of Art in America

2002
The Greater Good: An Artist's Contemporary View of the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment
Andy Warhol's "Silver Clouds": An Encore Presentation

2003
Georges Rouault: Miserere et Guerre, the complete series of etchings
Avoda: Objects of the Spirit

2004
Rito, Espejo y Ojo: Ritual, Mirror and Eye
Radiant Forms in Contemporary Sacred Architecture: Richard Meier & the Jubilee Church, Rome - Steven Holl & the Chapel of St. Ignatius, Seattle
(featured as a "Quick Escape" by the New York Times)
Daniel Ramirez - Twenty Contemplations on the Infant Jesus: An Homage to Olivier Messiaen

2005
Junko Chodos: The Breath of Consciousness
DoDo Jin Ming: Land and Sea

2006
Gorky: The Early Years - Drawings and Paintings, 1927-1937
Andy Warhol: Silver Clouds

2007
Oskar Fischinger: Movement and Spirit
The Celluloid Bible: Marketing Films Inspired by Scripture

2008
Miao Xiaochun: The Last Judgment in Cyberspace

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