Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University Underway Next March

The ground breaking is set for March 16 and construction is expected to last 23 months, with the museum opening in 2012.

Nicholas Tamarin -- Interior Design, 12/25/2009 12:00:00 AM

Zaha Hadid is at it again. The international starchitect and 2004 Pritzker Architecture Prize winner is expected to attend the March 16 groundbreaking for her design of Michigan State University’s Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum in East Lansing.

The architect was selected in January 2008 as the winner of an international competition to design the Broad Art Museum on the heels of her successful completion of several high-profile projects, including the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, the BMW Central Building in Leipzig, Germany, and the Bridge Pavilion in Zaragoza, Spain.



Construction on the Broad Art Museum is expected to last for 23 months and the university is eyeing a 2012 opening. Upon completion, the three-story fine art museum will boast 46,000 square-feet, 69 percent of which will be gallery space. The structure is also being built with eligibility for LEED certification in mind.

“In my past position, we talked about major cultural institutions being magnets,” says William Anderson, a retired director of the Michigan Department of History, Arts and Libraries and a member of the Broad Art Museum Advisory Board as well as a MSU alumnus. “[The Broad Art Museum] will have magnetic influence in terms of attraction for the campus community for East Lansing [and] Lansing and a much greater audience once the building and programming is in place. There is an interest on the university’s part for it to be transformational. Transformation means that this art museum will have a profound influence and that potential, I believe, is great.”



Images courtesy of Zaha Hadid Architects.