Michaela Nichelle (Mike) Martin and Dylan AT Miner: Farmland

Work by first-year MFA student Michaela Nichelle (Mike) Martin and Stamps Professor and Senior Associate Dean Dylan AT Miner is featured in Farmland: Food, Justice, and Sovereignty, opening January 18, 2025 at Michigan State University’s Broad Museum. The exhibition centers around questions of food knowledge, production, scarcity, and consumption against the background of MSU’s 170-year history of agricultural tradition.

Founded in 1855, the Agricultural College of the State of Michigan (now Michigan State University) sought not only to promote practical education in the agricultural arts but to turn the college into a model farm for the entire nation. It was the first institution for the study of agriculture of its kind, preceding its status as the prototype land-grant university.

Starting with the nucleus of agriculture — the farm and its changing relationship to the society it serves — the exhibition provides wide-ranging perspectives on key themes associated with equitable access to food: the urban-rural divide, issues of labor, race and immigration, the United States’ history of slavery and its continued protectionist import and export policies as well as modes of consumption centered around the commodification of food infrastructure and access to food.

Through community knowledge and art, Farmland tells a story of Indigenous knowledge, institutional research, farming, seeds, crops, and how the way food systems are designed can either hunger or nurture. The show is centered around a widespread network of local community consultants and collaborators — agricultural students, farmers, activists, researchers, and historians.

Farmland: Food, Justice, and Sovereignty
January 18 – July 27, 2025
Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University
547 E Circle Dr., East Lansing, MI 48824