Michael Rush to lead Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University
Michigan State University
December 10, 2010
Michigan State University has announced the hiring of Michael Rush as the founding director of the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum. Rush, most recently the director of the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, was recommended by a search committee after an extensive international search.
“We have a prestigious donor, world-class architect Zaha Hadid, stunning architecture and have now found the essential missing piece – an innovative art museum director – in hiring Michael Rush,” said President Lou Anna K. Simon. “Michigan State University welcomes this award-winning curator and widely published author and critic. With his entrepreneurial spirit, Michael will direct the months leading to a vibrant opening of the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum in 2012 and the exciting years to come.”
At Brandeis, located near Boston, Rush oversaw a significant collection of modern and contemporary art in the region and was widely recognized for his leadership during a controversial attempt by the university to sell the collection and close the museum.
He also was director of the Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art, has lectured internationally on art and museum practice, has received awards from the International Association of Art Critics for his curatorial projects and is the co-founder of the Contemporary Art Museum Directors Association. Rush also hosts an Internet radio program, “Rush Interactive,” on Art International Radio which is accessed in more than 40 countries around the world,
“We were asked to find a charismatic art museum professional with inventive ideas and vital connections in the contemporary art world. Michael Rush is that person,” said Linda Stanford, associate provost and chairperson of the search committee.
