Even without walls, the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum is a functioning facility at MSU — at least in the virtual sense.
Officials recently launched the Virtual Broad Art Museum, designed to give users the opportunity not only to tour the interior and exterior of the building but interact with several online art projects, museum director Michael Rush said.
“Ever since I got here, this is something that I’ve wanted to do,” Rush said.
“I wanted to create a universally accessible version of the museum in the digital world.”
The virtual museum currently features four works by intermedia artist John Fillwalk, including Flickr Gettr, which allows a user to search for photos from the Flickr service and view them within the virtual museum.
Adam Brown, an MSU associate professor of electronic art and intermedia, helped create the space.
Rush said the work of other artists will be built into the product as it develops.
“This is a way of creating a museum in the virtual world before there’s one in the physical world and … announcing our interest in international reach and international collaboration,” Rush said.
As the museum’s features are planned online and for an eventual fall opening, construction continues on the building itself.
The glass window panels that delayed the museum’s dedication originally set for this spring now are arriving on a regular basis and are being installed, university engineer Bob Nestle said.
“They’ve been coming in for the past couple of weeks,” he said, noting there are about 43 panels waiting to either be shipped to MSU or be installed.
“It’s going to be several weeks before we get all of them.”
The interior of the building is in the process of being finished, but because of the glass panel delay, significant features including a staircase must wait until all the panels are in, Nestle said.
No new opening date has been set yet. The date originally was set for April 21.
Interior design sophomore Brittany Gonte said she recently was able to tour the building during a class.
Because she holds interests in interior design and art, she said she’s looking forward to the museum’s opening and what it might be able to provide to the university community.
“It’s interesting that we get something so important at State,” Gonte said.
“Not a lot of people realize what this building could bring.”
The digital museum can be visited by going to broadmuseum.msu.edu/VBAM/.
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