'We Are This Land' exhibition offers reflection on nation at 250 years

With time comes perspective. The year 2026 marked the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. This act marked the founding of the United States of America on July 4, 1776. These historical junctures offer timely opportunities for both reflection and future visioning.

Such is the case now, when questions concerning the role of history and the future of the United States are at the forefront of many people’s minds. How can we look to and learn from artists in moments like these?

"We Are This Land: Meditations on the Great American Experiment" is a large-scale group exhibition that occupies the main galleries of the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University. Five guiding topics help organize the exhibition: civics, history, family and kinship, map-making, and care for the environment. This approach creates a forum for open dialogue and engagement, while also offering critical perspectives on our nation’s place within broader historical timelines and the wider world.

"We Are This Land," the exhibition’s main title, introduces this idea. With it, emphasis is placed on the notion that “we,” collectively, define this place. It also asserts that our relationship to this place must be grounded in careful consideration of the land we occupy and help steward. The title itself is a direct quote from “Bless this Land,” a 2019 poem by former U.S. poet laureate and Indigenous activist Joy Harjo, an important source of inspiration for the exhibition.

The exhibition also offers an opportunity to remember the ways in which museums themselves are spaces of civic participation. Recent research from the National Endowment for the Arts shows that participation in the arts actually increases social activity and civic engagement.

“The museum is a way to engage in conversations that you might not normally come up with,” MSU Broad Art Museum Director Phillip Bahar said. “So really, the notion of community is baked into a museum visit.”

The exhibition itself also took a community of perspectives and experiences to help develop and shape it, not only from artists, but from individuals and organizations across campus. A substantial roster of free programs throughout the exhibition’s run grow forth from numerous collaborations.

One of those collaborators is MSUvotes, who hosted open office hours at the museum weekly leading up to election day, to help students prepare their voting plan for November.

“Voting is one way of communicating what is important to you,” said Renee Miller Zientek, executive director for the Center for Community Engaged Learning and co-director of MSUvotes. “But determining what’s important to you happens in your everyday civic engagements. It’s about not just changing what you know, but who you are so that you can move through society with that new understanding.”

Miller Zientek notes that going to an art museum to have these engagements with art and ideas is one of those everyday moments of civic participation that contribute to our self of sense and our understanding of the world around us.

Guided by the American democratic ideals of participation and experimentation, "We Are This Land" offers many different prompts for visitors to consider their own role in these conversations. Encouraging visitors to actively —civically — participate in looking to the past and acknowledging the present, senior curator Steven Bridges and the museum ask us all to consider what new ways of imagining the future emerge.

“These kinds of anniversaries allow us to grapple with these things, hopefully in productive and generative ways,” said Bridges, “so that we can create brighter, better futures for all.”

"We Are This Land: Meditations on the Great American Experiment" is on view at the MSU Broad Art Museum through March 14, 2027.