Bahar shares his background and tells why he wants to lead The Broad. He talks about the museum’s evolving mission and shares his short- and long-term goals for The Broad. He discusses challenges and opportunities ahead for The Broad and for the entire arts industry.
Conversation Highlights:
(0:20) – What’s your background?
(1:22) – Is there something unique about a museum in a university setting?
(2:03) – Do you have any experience with MSU, the state of Michigan, and/or The Broad?
(2:46) – What attracted you to leading The Broad at MSU?
(3:39) – What’s the mission of the museum, and what’s your vision for evolving the mission?
(4:56) – What are some of your short- and long-term goals for The Broad?
(6:15) – What are some of the challenges and opportunities ahead for The Broad and the entire arts industry?
(7:05) – What are some current or future exhibits you’d like to put on people’s radars?
(8:14) – What are some of the Broad’s priorities in MSU’s Uncommon Will. Far Better World campaign?
(9:53) – How would you like faculty, staff, student and the public to interact with the museum?
(11:27) – Final thoughts.
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Conversation Transcript
Speaker 1:
On this episode of MSU today, it's great to welcome the new director of the Eli and Edith Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University. Phillip Bahar. Phillip, great to meet you and welcome to the university and the program.
Speaker 2:
Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to be here at MSU and at the Broad,
Speaker 1:
Could you start, give us a little bit of your background that's led you to MSU?
Speaker 2:
Sure. I've had my entire career in the arts and museums. I just came from Chicago where I led the Chicago Humanities Festival. We'd put on about a hundred programs a year, artists, authors, journalists, policy makers, other thinkers from across the world, and a lot of academics. So I'm very close to working with the university systems and working with thought leaders in their fields. And before that, I was at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, which is one of the great contemporary art museums in the world. Film Series performing arts series. Really amazing exhibitions in certain ways. Very similar to the Broad, really thinking about the museum as a multidisciplinary space, a space for artists to spread their wings and do new work, but also an opportunity for audiences to really experiencing experience, things that are new and that might change how they think about the world.
Speaker 1:
And is there something unique about a museum in a university setting?
Speaker 2:
Absolutely, because MSU has a faculty, they have faculty with such a wide array of experiences and knowledge, and I think that's one of the things that actually makes the broad very special, is that we do a lot of partnerships with faculty. So they bring their research, they bring their areas of inquiry into our space with us, and then we get to play with the collection and with artists to figure out, okay, how can we tell a story that's through the lens of what they're thinking about, but very much true to who we are and to who the collection is and the artists we present.
Speaker 1:
And do you happen to have any past experience with either MSU, the state of Michigan or maybe the broad itself?
Speaker 2:
I hadn't had direct experience, but obviously I'd been following the broad from its founding. The Zaha Hadid building was a big deal when it was first built, the first free standing building by that architect in America. And then also the exhibitions over the last 12 years, I've periodically dipped in and seen what's been going on there from afar. There have been a lot of actually Chicago artists that have passed through the Broad. So along the way I've kind of been in Chicago seeing Chicago artists kind of starting to expand their reach and many of them have ended up here. Yeah,
Speaker 1:
That's cool. So what attracted you to leading the broad here at MSU?
Speaker 2:
Certainly I think museums are magical spaces, and I think the broad from the exterior to the experience inside is really special. The collection is a historic collection, but we're a very much contemporary institution, and that's what drew me to it. As a museum, we're focusing on issues that really matter to us as individuals as a society today, but we have this lens and this ability to dip into our past while looking at our present. One of the great things I think of the humanities, but certainly of museums is that ability to bring the present to life through a different lens and maybe give you a different perspective on how to think about things or how to see things.
Speaker 1:
And you've been discussing it, Phillip, but talk a little bit about the mission of the museum and then your vision for evolving that mission.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I mean, the broad really has, I'd say two core areas of focus. One is obviously the MSU community. We want art to be essential to all the students on campus and the faculty on campus. That essential element might be once a year coming and having an experience. It might be coming every week, it might be coming every day. But really making art a central part of the MSU experience as part one and then more in the region and in the Lansing East Lansing community. Being the primary art museum in this area is a really important responsibility and we take it seriously and it allows us to think about what kind of exhibition should we be putting on that serve both the campus and the community. Sometimes one, sometimes other. Always both, right? So the last exhibit we closed maybe a couple months ago was called Farmland, and it was a look through the lens of artists on food production, on agriculture. So there was a really beautiful connection to where we are, the kind of institution we are as a university, but then having artists really think about, okay, what do these things mean to us in our daily lives?
Speaker 1:
Phillip, you're just getting started, but do you have some sort of short-term goals as you get started? And if you've had even some time, maybe some longer term ones down the road?
Speaker 2:
The short-term goals is
Speaker 2:
Just to meet
Speaker 2:
People. I've been meeting a lot of people, both the staff, faculty, deans, et cetera. So that's a big priority in the short term.
Speaker 1:
Right?
Speaker 2:
In the long-term, it's really about how can we continue to build on the Broad's amazing legacy, interacting and connecting with more individual students, interacting with partners across the region and nationally because also at a national level, there are only so many university art museums. And I think some of the things we're doing are really unique and distinctive and are going to help shape how the field is evolving. And I'll use the example of the core, which is our core collection. We've built out a whole space in the museum that allows you to really see the full swath of the kind of artists and art we have in a very dense space, but in a space that's constantly moving and evolving. So if you come back today, it might be different than it was two, three months ago. So these kind of ability to use a collection, which is a collection that you'll have for a long time, but keeping it fresh and evolving along the way.
Speaker 1:
Yeah. What would you say are both some of the challenges and opportunities ahead for the broad, but really the arts industry in general? I know we could have a conference on that, but just some of your thoughts.
Speaker 2:
Certainly funding has shifted a lot. The beauty of the Broad is we do have some endowment that allows us to know that we can do a baseline level of work. People's behaviors have changed a lot since the pandemic, and I think for a couple years out of the pandemic, people weren't really engaging outside of their home as much. They still aren't. But I feel like over this last year or so, people have started to really want to feel the physical again. They want to be in community again in a different way. So it's a really great opportunity to kind of, how do we pick up this moment that we're all going through as an entire nation, as a world and prompt people to come back together and create community.
Speaker 1:
What about some exhibits, either currently at the Broad or down the road that you'd like to put on people's radars?
Speaker 2:
Yeah. Right now we have a beautiful show by Diana Al Hadid. It's a look back at the power of Women in art. It's a look back at Greek mythology, the Bible, and kind of how these images and these stories continue to resonate today. But what's really special about her is her technique. She has this beautiful kind of painting sculptural technique that I think really sucks everybody in, regardless of whether you know what the references are or not. We also have a beautiful show that's the 65 years of the African American Studies program here. So we worked with those departments to bring together a selection from our collection as well as the MSU Museum and other archives on campus. So it's a nice way to kind of see how an institution like a university can evolve. Its thinking about different areas of inquiry and then how museums can really support that both at the educational level and kind of as objects.
Speaker 1:
And Phillip the university has its uncommon, will far better world campaign underway. Can you talk about some of the fundraising priorities at the Broad for the campaign?
Speaker 2:
Yeah. We focus a lot on student professional development and educational development. So we have a whole crew of about 60 students who are with us throughout the year, giving tours, giving educational programs, going out into classrooms. So that's something I'm really, that's actually one of the core reasons I joined, was this opportunity to help young adults kind of early and establishing who they want to be and how they want to engage in the world, how they want to engage with museums and art, and really giving these deep opportunities to learn and to also enjoy the spirit of what can happen in the cultural community. So really focusing on student evolution is a big priority. And hand in hand with that is the focus on artists, giving artists the opportunities to really spread their wings, maybe to do exhibitions they wouldn't be able to do otherwise, take their work in a new direction. We have a commissioning program that we have coming in the winter spring. I think it opens mid-January. An artist from Chicago, actually, Jan Tichy, who has this beautiful exhibition called Darkness, and it's really a look at dark and light. And he's using the building and the galleries, which are such distinctive spaces in a way that I don't think any artist has used it yet. It'll be very much experiential and you'll move through a few different spaces, and he's highlighting it with lasers and with video. It'll be great.
Speaker 1:
So Phillip, how would you like faculty, staff, students, the general public to interact with the museum?
Speaker 2:
I mean, obviously as visitors first and foremost, but like I said, there are faculty who really find the value in experiencing live objects, even if their area of focus is not the visual arts. So I'll use an example. There are writing classes that come in and they use the museum and we work with our educators to help people do slow looking and really kind of go deep into an object. And then how do you describe that? How do you describe the experience? How do you describe the visual impact of those objects? So we're very closely connected to that. Other students from the education school come in and we teach them how to do training and talking through objects and spaces so that they can take that into their classrooms and wherever else they're working. So depending on whether you're a student, a faculty member, somebody in the public, I think there are multiple ways you can engage with us. Obviously exhibitions are central, but we have an amazing series of programs that go on throughout the year. Obviously many of them created by our educators and our curators, but also many of them created in partnership with faculty and with student groups. So there are a lot of opportunities to engage.
Speaker 1:
Well, Phillip Bahar, great to meet you again. Welcome to Michigan State University. Phillip is the new director of the Eli and Edith Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University, broad museum.msu.edu. Just summarize our conversation, what you'd like listeners to take away from our chat. Phillip.
Speaker 2:
The Broad is just, it's a jewel on campus. It's an opportunity to escape your daily life, your studies, and to go into the world of an artist. One of the great beauties of museums is artists create these spaces that allow you to get outside of yourself, to experience the world differently. And the best art and artists, they really make you, they transform. I mean, that's the power of museums. They transform you. You can go in one person and you come out just slightly different. You've seen something in a new way, and those things can go deep, deep into who you are. I know from personal experience, I have experiences throughout my life that still resonate with me, and that's the power of museums and that's what we'd like to do at the Broad Museum as well as provide those opportunities and make art really essential to everyone's life.
Speaker 1:
So much going on at MSU’s Broad Art Museum. Phillip, again, thank you for telling us all about it. And again, welcome to the university.
Speaker 2:
Thanks so much. Appreciate it.
Speaker 1:
Phillip Bahar, the new director of Michigan State University's, Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum. And I'm Russ White. This is MSU today.
Speaker 2:
Find rate, and subscribe to MSU today with Russ White on Spotify, apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows. And please feel free to share this episode if you're so inclined.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
Thank you for listening to MSU today.