By Laura Berman / The Detroit News

     No Taubman. No Manoogian. No Gilbert Silverman, eminent local collector of contemporary art.
   Detroit's art establishment -- the zillionaire patrons, the snootiest gallery owners -- are notably absent from the board of the Museum of New Art.
   This museum is neither Palladian palace nor temple to contemporary architecture. Its location in a Washington Boulevard skyscraper was fashionable 60 years ago. Is this place, in fact, a museum? Will it ever become one? Any art patron or admirer might ask these questions while touring the raw and rough 10,000 square feet of space in the Book Building where Jef Bourgeau -- artist, provocateur and self-styled curator -- and a cadre of supporters are launching a museum to house the art of now.
   The last time I spoke to Bourgeau, we met at his grandly titled Museum of Contemporary Art, then housed in a Pontiac gallery's tiny back room.
   Before becoming an art museum, the little room had been a storage closet.
   Since then, the museum got out of the closet and into a Pontiac storefront.
   Now it's renamed and into a loft-like space with a concrete floor, dangling wires and picture windows with a grayish cast, because the window washer split after cleaning only two.
   Perhaps this is a completely suitable place for edgy, of-the-moment art -- art that by definition isn't embraced by the sort of people who wear gowns and tuxedoes at museum fund-raisers.
   Or at least not until it has survived some test of time and the marketplace.
   Most visionaries are irritating to the establishment figures around them. In that regard, Bourgeau's most famously annoying moment was when he produced a show for the Detroit Institute of Arts that then newly installed director Graham Beale identified as instant controversy -- and the show shut.
   Tyree Guyton, the street artist known for polka dots on trees, has had his work displayed in museums and magazines around the world. But in his hometown, he has largely been regarded as a nuisance.
   And placing Bourgeau within a context -- self-promoter, benign day-dreamer? -- remains very much a work in progress.
   The museum, supported by some local art figures and community members, hosts its first public event Saturday night -- a silent auction of donated art.
   And Bourgeau, an adroit public relations artist, inspired artists from Detroit and around the world to donate pieces for this weekend's auction.
   "Detroit may be the last big city to get a museum of contemporary art, but it's always good to be first or last," says Bourgeau, 50, whose soft-spoken style belies his commitment. Is MONA just a nutty dream? Maybe.
   But here's my confession: A decade ago, I thought the Detroit Opera House was David DiChiera's delusion.