The Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum hosted its inaugural faculty exhibition show Friday evening. The show featured 21 MSU studio art and design faculty members’ artwork, the first time the two-years-old museum had featured exclusively, MSU-related artists in an exhibition.
Many of the faculty members have had their art displayed on national and international levels, but this new exhibition provides them with a means to display their work to their students and community in East Lansing.
Guest curated by Christina Chang, the Curator of Engagement at the Minnesota Museum of American Art, the event, which will be held once every three years, takes the faculty members’ artwork to a new level. The faculty are given a unique opportunity to represent themselves to the community through their artwork.
Chang had the role of selecting which works by each faculty member that would be put on display. Despite this challenge, Chang found the most difficult task being the positioning of the art in the museum.
“It was really the placement that ended up being the hardest. Especially since there were very few ways that it could go. We pretty much maximized the space for the exhibition,” Chang said.
Also responsible for some preparation of this event was Yesomi Umolu, the assistant curator at the museum. She looked at this exhibition the same way she would any other.
“When we work with artists, we’re always thinking of how to best present their works,” she said.
With the exhibition being held at the Broad located on Grand River Avenue, it gives faculty members an opportunity to engage the non-university community in East Lansing as well.
“I think it’s really important for the students to see what the faculty are doing, and it’s important for the faculty to be engaged with the contemporary art world,” Chris Corneal, the chairperson of the Department of Art, Art History and Design, said. “It’s good for both parties.”
The idea of a faculty exhibition allows for collaboration and a diverse set of artwork from all participants.
“I’m hoping that the faculty members will discover new things about each other’s work and see some connections that maybe they didn’t know were there,” Chang said.
