The Department of Art, Art History, and Design and the Michigan State University community offer a variety of resources for students and faculty interested in art and design. We encourage you to browse through the available resources and get to know more about how they may benefit your studies at MSU.

Department of Art, Art History, and Design Facilities

The Department of Art, Art History, and Design stretches across two buildings and an annex on MSU’s main campus. The Kresge Art Center located on auditorium road is home to Art Education, Art History & Visual Culture, Graphic Design, and Studio Art. All courses taught in the sculpture area meet in the sculpture annex, located directly behind the Kresge Art Center. Our Apparel & Textile Design courses, Comic Art & Graphic Novels, and some of our foundations courses meet in the Urban Planning Landscape Architecture building or UPLA located on the corned of Red Cedar and Wilson Road. All of our buildings support curriculum specific facilities and resources for student enrolled in AAHD courses.

Kresge Art Center Facilities:

  • Ceramics Studio
  • Computer Labs & Digital Print Lab
  • Galleries & Installation Spaces
  • Form From Thought Lab
  • Photography Lighting Studio
  • Printmaking Studio
  • Wood Shop

Graduate students will be given private or semi-private studios and 24-hour access to many facilities located in the Kresge Art Center.

Woodshop

The Department of Art, Art History, and Design houses a fully-equipped woodshop on the ground floor of the Kresge Art Center. Students currently enrolled in AAHD classes, as well as AAHD Faculty, Graduate Students, and Staff. 

Ceramics

The AAHD Ceramic Studio is located inside the Kresge Art Center. During the academic year all students enrolled in ceramics courses have 24 hour access to the space. The studio supports ample space for hand building, wheel throwing, and slip-casting. Inside the studio you will find 17 kilns: 4 indoor gas kilns including 1 soda kiln, 11 electric kilns, a wood kiln just outside the building, and a place for raku firing. The space is also home to a large glaze lab with a spray booth, and a clay mixing room. The graduate studios are adjacent to the main ceramics studios and have private access. All studios have network connections with wifi. 

Form From Thought Lab

The Form From Thought Laboratory (FFT Lab) is an extension of the emerging area of Electronic Art and Intermedia in the Department of Art, Art History, and Design. The FFT Lab is dedicated to providing tools and resources to help bridge the disciplines in a collaborative research and studio environment. It  is a brand new, state-of-the-art electronic fabrication, prototyping, and sculpture facility designed for research and fostering interdisciplinarity.

The physical lab space includes an Epilog Laser cutter, 3D laser scanner, a 48″x96” 3-axis Alpha Shopbot router and an Electronics Lab as well as a gathering space for faculty and students.

Metal Shop and Foundry

The sculpture program is situated in a two-story facility just outside the Kresge Art Center. The annex includes private undergraduate/graduate studios, general work area, metals shop, walk-in plastics and paint spray room, critique and installation gallery, modeling and plaster room, and ceramic shell room and wax room. Enabling students to explore a wide range of processes, the facility is equipped with a state of the art ventilation system. Technical support is available on a regular basis.

The main Kresge Art Center building also includes a well-equipped foundry with a programmable burnout kiln, one-ton bridge crane, and a large courtyard and outdoor work area are adjacent to the facilities.

Photography and Lighting Studio

The photography area works across three different facilities in Kresge Art Center: a traditional darkroom with print finishing/critique area, a digital photo lab, and a professionally equipped lighting studio. Advanced digital cameras and lenses are available for check-out from the Visual Resource Library for students currently enrolled in AAHD courses.

Computer Labs

Two computer labs are available to students enrolled in the Department of Art, Art History, and Design courses. These labs are equipped with design, photo, and motion graphics software, as well as scanners (both reflective and transparency), and laser printers. If you are enrolled in a course within the Department of Art, Art History, and Design , and would like to request key card access to these labs, please complete the Computer Lab Access Request Form.

Printmaking

Printmaking has two large studios on the second floor of the Kresge Art Center dedicated to a diverse range of techniques surrounding the traditional and contemporary techniques used in the study of printmaking. Students have access to two etching presses and four lithography presses. The etching presses also accommodate relief and collograph printing.

Visual Resources and Print Lab

Sculpture Annex:

  • Metal Shop
  • Plaster Room
  • Wax Room / Foundry 

Urban Planning Landscape Architecture (UPLA) Facilities:

  • Computer Lab & Digital Print Lab
  • Screen Printing Studio
  • Sewing Studios

Kresge Art Store

Housed on the first floor of Kresge Art Center, you’ll find the Kresge Art Store. The Art Store sells everything from paper to canvas and paint to pottery and sculpting tools. You’ll also find plenty of fun toys and accessories stocked with the artist and designer in mind. Additionally, there are snacks and good coffee.

Students looking for work in the Department of Art,  Art History, and Design are also encouraged to inquire at the Art Store as they commonly hire art students. 

The store is open Monday through Thursday from 9AM to 5PM and Friday from 9AM to 2PM.  For more information, call 517.353.7269.

MSU Library

In addition to the Department of Art, Art History, and Design Visual Resource Library, faculty and students will also find the resources provided by the MSU Libraries helpful.

The MSU Main Library collection includes over 4,500,000 volumes, 33,000 magazine and journal subscriptions, 200,000 maps, 40,000 sound recordings, plus access to hundreds of electronic resources. During the Fall and Spring semesters, when MSU classes are in session, the Main Library building is open 24 hours a day from Sunday at Noon to Friday at 10 p.m.  

The Fine Arts Library is located in the west wing of the Main Library on the fourth floor. It houses the collections for art (including the Visual Arts, Architecture and Photography) and music (including scores, recordings, and books).

The MSU Special Collections located inside the MSU Main library is home to a Comic Art Collection holding over 200,000 items. Most of these items are American comic books, but also included are over 1,000 books of collected newspaper comic strips, nearly 15,000 foreign comic books, and several thousand books and periodicals about comics.

The Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum

The Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum is the art museum of Michigan State University. Also an engaged public institution, the MSU Broad is a contemporary museum devoted to the exploration and exhibition of significant art from around the globe. This international focus is also supported by the contextualizing of contemporary art within the history of art by virtue of our historical collection. The MSU Broad is a place where artists’ ideas, words, and actions create a vibrant center for questioning and understanding the modern world.

Dedicated to experimentation and study, the MSU Broad is a laboratory for innovation, grounded in a deep appreciation for the historical. With a historic collection containing objects from the Greek and Roman periods, through the Renaissance, and on to the Modern, the MSU Broad is unique among contemporary art museums. 

Designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Zaha Hadid, the museum features a striking facade of pleated stainless steel and glass, signaling the museum and the University’s dynamic vision. More than 70 percent of the 46,000-square-foot facility is dedicated to exhibition space. The museum is named for Eli and Edythe Broad, longtime supporters of Michigan State University, who provided the lead gift for the museum.

If you are interested in learning more about what is happening at the museum please click here to join their mailing list.

MSU Museum

The MSU Museum, initiated in 1857, is one of the oldest museums in the Midwest and is accredited by the American Alliance of Museums. In 2001, the MSU Museum became the first museum in the state to receive Smithsonian affiliate status from the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., the world’s largest museum and research complex, thereby giving the MSU Museum broader access to Smithsonian cultural and scientific resources.

The museum is a public steward for nearly a million objects and specimens of cultural and natural history from around the world. It serves as a major state repository for the Department of Natural Resources (biological collections) and the Bureau of History (archaeological collections) and is the home of the Michigan Traditional Arts Program, a statewide program in partnership with Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs.The Museum reaches a broad and diverse audience through strong, varied, and accessible collections, field- and collections-based research, public service and education programs, traveling exhibits, and innovative partnerships with Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs (MCACA), the Great Lakes Fisheries Trust, and Michigan State University Extension (MSUE).

As the science and culture museum at Michigan State University, the MSU Museum “is committed to understanding, interpreting, and respecting natural and cultural diversity through education, exhibitions, research, and the building and stewardship of collections that focus on Michigan and its relationship to the Great Lakes, and the world beyond.”