Michigan State’s Independent Voice
T UESDAY, JANUARY 28, 2025
New MSU Broad Museum exhibit focuses on food justice, agriculture in Michigan
STAT E N EWS.CO M
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Artists Cansu Cürgen and Avsar ¸ Gürpınar stand in front of their piece, Ambiguous Standards Institute, at the Eli & Edythe Broad Art Museum on Jan. 23, 2025. The artist duo, originally from Turkey, were scouted by Michigan State for this exhibition. Photo by Maya Kolton.
Photo by Maya Kolton.
By Ria Gupta rgupta@statenews.com A new exhibition at the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum focuses on food justice and its wideranging implications in Michigan. Looking at the history and impact of agriculture in the state, the collection explores “questions of food knowledge, production, scarcity, and consumption,” according to the museum website. “Farmland: Food, Justice, and Sovereignty,” which opened Jan. 18, was co-curated by former associate curator Teresa Fankhänel and assistant curator Dalina A. Perdomo Álvarez. Curators at the museum wanted to make the ongoing conversation about food justice more relevant, “punchier” and tie it into MSU’s history, Perdomo Álvarez said. “The history is complicated,” Perdomo Álvarez said. “Some people are indigenous to this land. Some people have a history of several generations living here, but they immigrated from elsewhere. Some, like myself, migrated here a few years ago.” Regardless of museum visitors’ relationship to the land, Perdomo Álvarez hopes they walk away “understanding that there’s that diversity of connections, but ultimately we’re all responsible (for) the land, and the land is what feeds us.” “We should be educated on those topics and also have a respect for the land, even if the experiences are different,” Perdomo Álvarez said. T he ex hibit is split into sections
Photo by Maya Kolton.
on f a r mworke r s a nd e x i s t i ng fo o d k nowledge before leading into labor rights and overconsumption, and then centering Michigan. As part of the museum’s research process for the exhibit, workers assigned to the project visited local farms in 2023 to learn more about farmworker communities. The result of those conversations is shown throughout the collection. One of the first paintings showcased in the exhibition is “Michigan Pasture with Cows,” painted by German immigrant Mathias Joseph Alten in 1914. A plaque next to it confronts the serenity of the painting, teasing the idea that farm work is relaxing and the “growing nostalgia for past lifestyles and landscapes.” That detail was inspired by the researchers’ conversations with farmworkers. “I kind of poke fun a little bit because whenever I talk to farmers, farmworkers, they would complain about the cattle,” Perdomo Álvarez said. “Many had gotten rid of the cattle from their farm because it was just so difficult to maintain, especially for dairy.” The table centerpiece of the exhibit was put together by Fankhänel, an architecture historian who specializes in exhibition design. The table is a mix between a farmhouse table and an artist’s design table. On top is a collection of barns from the MSU Museum’s collection, selected with the intention to showcase the “different purposes” a barn can have.
Photo by Maya Kolton.
“Some of them are for storage, some of them are for hay feeding, some are more multipurpose,” Perdomo Álvarez said. Multiple pieces also come from Turkish artists Cansu Curgen and Avşar Gürpınar, part of the Ambiguous Standards Institute. The institute seeks to draw attention to single-use items when it comes to food and other things deemed necessary, like egg cups or outlets designated by country. “The common point in each (piece) is that there are either ambiguous or vague, unclear standards,” Gürpınar said. “In the case of ambiguous standards of food, we are looking at bird eggs and we look at how a specific egg is classified as being edible or not. What are the standards?” This idea of standards is prominent t h r oug hout t he mu s eu m’s e x h i bit , determining what is “greed versus need,” as Perdomo Álvarez puts it. The end of the exhibition is marked by another table, this time for dining. Surrounding it is a series of photographs that depict many of the farms that researchers visited early on in the curatorial process. The table itself lists different resources in the MSU and Greater Lansing area to learn more about food justice and consumption. The museum is also hosting panels to help educate the local community throughout its duration. The list of events can be viewed here. The exhibit will remain open until July 27.
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