Rather than complaining about the fourth year of a campus infrastructure project on north campus, the MSU Museum embraced it by creating an exhibit explaining the construction going on outside its front door.
The MSU Museum worked with MSU Infrastructure Planning and Facilities to create the small outdoor pop-up exhibit, “Full Steam Ahead,” which details the project.
Displayed on the construction site fences, the exhibit tells of the project that is providing core improvements to MSU’s underground infrastructure system, including upgrades to the steam-distribution tunnels, the water main and the telecommunication and electrical lines.
Acting director of the MSU Museum Lora Helou said the museum was prepared for the construction.
“We worked with schools, especially the school bus drivers, so that they had good information on alternate drop off and pick up points,” Helou said. “We worked through a lot of the logistics.”
The exhibit addresses what is going on at the job site, the meaning of infrastructure and tells that much of the work that keeps MSU humming is out of sight, out of mind.
“There’s dirt, sand, holes and construction vehicles, so it’s this point of curiosity, and we wanted to explain to people what is happening here,” Helou said.
She said that as director of the museum, she and the staff wanted to take the opportunity to reinforce the idea that informal learning happens everywhere, sometimes in unexpected places and ways.
Helou said MSU IPF worked to stagger the project throughout four years so that it did not have too great an impact on the different areas of work on north campus.
The exhibit will be displayed until the middle of August, when IPF plans to take down the construction fences and finish construction.