EAST LANSING, MI.- The Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, a new Zaha Hadid-designed contemporary art museum at Michigan State University (MSU), will open to the public on April 21, 2012. Dedicated to exploring international contemporary culture and ideas through art, the Broad/MSU will serve as an educational resource for the University and a cultural hub for the state of Michigan. The museum will also actively engage with the international artistic community through a series of partnerships with contemporary art spaces around the world, which will launch in conjunction with the April opening.

The Broad/MSU’s inaugural exhibitions, curated by founding director Michael Rush, exemplify the museum’s dual focus on presenting international contemporary art in all media, as well as thematic exhibitions that investigate contemporary works within a historical context:

• Global Groove 1973/2012 will use Nam June Paik’s seminal 1973 video Global Groove as a jumping off point to explore current trends in international video art.

• In Search of Time will investigate artists’ expressions of time and memory by creating dialogues among works by artists including Josef Albers, Romare Bearden, Damien Hirst, Toba Khadoori, Andy Warhol, Eadweard Muybridge, and Sam Jury, among others.

Simultaneous openings at art spaces in Guangzhou, China; Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam; Sao Paolo, Brazil; Lahore, Pakistan; and Istanbul, Turkey will launch the museum’s ongoing program of partnerships with arts institutions worldwide. Interactive screens in the museum will connect visitors at the Broad/MSU to the various global venues.

“In our increasingly interconnected world, our most pressing challenges span the boundaries of disciplines and nations,” said MSU President Lou Anna K. Simon. “It is Michigan State University’s mission to prepare our students to address these global challenges through bold and innovative thinking. The BroadArt Museum at MSU will allow students to explore how artistic expression mirrors and shapes contemporary experience around the world, and inspire the kind of critical and creative thinking that will help them thrive.”

“With our inaugural exhibitions, we seek to situate the Broad Art Museum at the center of artistic research and development within the global mandate of Michigan State University,” said Rush. “By virtue of its collection, the Broad is uniquely able to create new narratives within a historical context. By presenting international contemporary artists in dialogue with their forebears, a dynamic understanding of art history will be constantly investigated.”

The Broad Art Museum’s opening exhibitions, which will feature loans including works from the collection of the museum’s founding donors, Eli and Edythe Broad, as well as works from the study collection inherited from the Kresge Art Museum, the former art museum of MSU, will be:

Global Groove 1973/2012
Global Groove 1973/2012 uses Nam June Paik’s seminal 1973 video Global Groove as a jumping off point to explore current trends in international video art. A characteristically fast paced barrage of images and sounds, Global Groove was Paik’s prophetic statement about the future ubiquity of the video image. "This is a glimpse of the video landscape of tomorrow, when you will be able to switch to any TV station on the earth, and TV Guide will be as fat as the Manhattan telephone book," he said of the piece.

Featuring works by Basher Alhroub (Palestine), Berry Bickle (Zimbabwe), Negar Behbahani (Iran), Yong Baek Lee (South Korea), Basir Mahmood (Pakistan), Zwelethu Mthethwa (South Africa), and Tuan Andrew Nguyen (Viet Nam), among others, Global Groove 1973/2012 will explore the rapid rise of video as a medium in art around the world, and celebrate artists’ varied approaches to the medium—from low-tech to highly cinematic, personal and diaristic to intensely political and challenging. The exhibition will include a unique architectural design for video presentation in the center of the Broad Art Museum’s largest gallery, conceived to enhance visitors’ experience of Zaha Hadid’s architecture along with that of the exhibition.

In Search of Time
Through dialogues among artworks from the medieval period, the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, In Search of Time will give voice to artists’ perpetual longing to express their relationships to time and memory. Celebrating the long history of collecting by the Broad Art Museum’s founding donors, the exhibition will feature key loans from The Broad Art Foundation, as well as works from the museum’s collection, and selected loans.

In Search of Time will include works by Josef Albers, William Baziotes, Romare Bearden, Joseph Beuys, Brassai, Larry Clark, John Coplans, Joseph Cornell, Salvador Dalí, Elliott Erwitt, Paolo di Giovanni Fei, Damien Hirst, Toba Khadoori, E.O. Hoppé, Sam Jury, Mike Kelley, Eadweard Muybridge, Fairfield Porter, Esteban Vicente, and Andy Warhol, as well as 19th century African objects.

In the future, the Broad/MSU will present traveling exhibitions, initiatives with living artists, performances, and educational offerings for students, faculty, and the community, fulfilling its dual role as a teaching institution and as a cultural hub for the region. By facilitating exploration of contemporary ideas and global issues across disciplines through the lens of the artist’s gaze, the museum will serve as an academic resource and a vibrant center for student and public engagement and multidisciplinary learning.

The museum is named in honor of Eli and Edythe Broad, longtime supporters of the university who provided the lead gift of $28 million for the museum. The Broads’ gift, of which $21.5 million was designated for design and construction and $6.5 million for acquisitions, exhibitions, and operations,was the catalyst for the project. The total project cost for the museum will be between $40 and $45 million.