Dorian Reid: Calling All Cats @ MoAD

At the center of Calling All Cats! is the black cat, a creature followed for centuries by superstition and suspicion. In Reid’s hands, the cat carries dignity, wit, tenderness, and agency. It appears as artist, neighbor, witness, troublemaker, and friend. This collection of objects will tell the story of the "Black Cat Revolution," a movement and club Reid founded in 2024 to dismantle prejudices and raise funds for cats and community members.‍

This exhibition brings us into the full breadth of Reid’s imagination and introduces one of the Bay Area’s most singular multidisciplinary artists. Her work is joyful, intimate, politically alive, and gloriously its own. She explains, "I'm creating my own Black History with cats. The club is for all who love cats, freedom, justice, liberation, and stand against superstition."‍

Come for the cats. Stay for the world they have built around them.‍

Dorian Reid has built a world which draws parallels between her familial connection to The Black Panthers and her current fight for civil rights and animal welfare.‍

It is filled with family, musicians, activists, neighbors, historical figures, beloved animals, and cats of every color. Across ceramics, paintings, prints, textiles, furniture, protest signs, and community gatherings, they live together inside a visual culture full of humor, memory, care, and the particular spirit of the East Bay.‍

Reid was born and raised in Berkeley. She is the daughter of Betty Reid Soskin, whose work as a historian and public servant has changed how generations understand California’s past. Her family also owned Reid’s Records, the beloved Berkeley record store where music, conversation, and community shared the same address. That inheritance is present throughout Reid’s work. Family history becomes folklore. Portraiture records kinship. Art enters public life.