“The frame is all there, the cement is all poured and we’re very much on track for a spring opening,” Rush said. “I’m fully confident that (the money) will be raised.”

Linda Stanford, the associate provost for academic services, has been working as a project coordinator for the museum dating back to 2007.

She recalled the message MSU President Lou Anna K. Simon made describing her vision for the museum as “a transformative movement.”

“It’s a building that makes a statement: ‘We’re in a new era,’” Stanford said.

Rush currently is in the process of hiring staff, creating a budget, fundraising and overseeing the new branding for the museum.

“This is a new institution, and I’ve been hired to create that institution with all that means,” he said.

Stanford is excited about the recent addition of Rush to the project as museum director.

“(Rush is) a very creative and innovative art person, and it’s very fun to see him building staff and thinking of what the building will be,” she said. “He’s brought a lot of energy to the process, and so the feeling now is one of anticipation and that it really is going to happen.”

Stanford added, because the new museum meets international museum standards, the community will be exposed to new art it otherwise wouldn’t have had the opportunity to see.

Marsha MacDowell, a professor of art history and curator of folk arts at the MSU Museum, said adding a building expressly devoted to art is a critical addition for the university.

“Major universities have good museums, and there’s a reason,” MacDowell said. “It’s because they are seen as part of the cultivation and growth of knowledge of the humanities world and the scientific world.”

The museum will include the resources from the Kresge Art Museum but with a focus on modern art, Rush said.

“We’re going to be a leading center for contemporary art,” he said. “What we’ll be showing is the best of artistic creativity from a global perspective.”