MSU Alums Sell Bricks to Fund Honorary Art Acquisition

As Michigan State University (MSU) paves the way for a new art museum, several alums are selling the bricks of the former Paolucci Building to purchase artwork that would honor the university’s history.

According to excerpts from the article:

Linda Nelson explained that the Paolucci Building was built in 1947 on an acre and a half along Grand River Avenue near the Collingwood entrance of campus on the east end of downtown East Lansing, as a home management house. As required for a majors in home economics, students lived there with an adviser for six weeks, doing all their own cooking, washing and other domestic duties. As more students married, Nelson said real life made the course less necessary. By the early ‘70s it was phased out.

Last December, the building was razed to make room for the new Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, whose groundbreaking is set for spring. At a farewell party last summer, former provosts, teachers and adults who had been in the childhood development unit as children celebrated its history.

That’s when the idea emerged to raise money to purchase a piece for the new art museum in memory of Professor Beatrice Paolucci, for whom the building had been renamed in 1989. Paolucci, who died of cancer in 1983, was a national and international leader in the field of human ecology whose work focused on the importance of the family.

Read the entire article here.