Eyesore Lot On Lafayette Ave To Become MoCADA Sculpture Garden

FORT GREENE, BROOKLYN — A long-vacant lot on Lafayette Avenue will soon become an outdoor sculpture garden for the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle Reported.

The city's Landmarks Preservation Commission approved the idea this week for the 48 Lafayette Ave. space, which is on the corner of Fort Greene Place. The garden will offer rotating exhibits of sculptures at the site similar to the rotating style of its indoor museum, MoCADA board members said.

“The exhibitions will highlight the beautiful culture of the African diaspora,” board member Randall Sawyer told the Eagle.

The schedule for the sculpture garden to the public will probably be similar to the 80 Hanson Place indoor museum, which is open Wednesday through Sunday, from noon until 8 p.m., Sawyer said.

The lot, which MoCADA expects to buy, is 20 feet wide and 85 feet long. Commissioner Jeanne Lutfy said the sculpture garden plan will be a good use of the property that has been "an eyesore for quite some time." It has been vacant for several decades, the Eagle reports.

The garden is part of MoCADA's effort to expand its “footprint” over the next few years, Sawyer told the Eagle.

“We’ve always been known as ‘the museum without walls,’” he said.

Other off-site museum initiatives include the Soul of Brooklyn Festival and the KIDflix film festival.

The expansion will also include a relocation of the indoor museum to 300 Ashland Place, Sawyer said, though he did not have a specific timeline for the move.

Photo from GoogleMaps.