Image: Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, East Lansing
The Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University will open 'Rayyane Tabet: 128 Civics Questions' on August 22, 2026, with the site-specific intervention installed throughout the museum and extending onto MSU’s campus. The exhibition runs through March 14, 2027, and is presented alongside two other new fall exhibitions opening the same day at the museum.
According to the museum, the project uses questions from the study guide for the United States 2025 Naturalization Civics Test developed by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. The exhibition places select questions from the exam in unexpected locations around the Broad, turning them into prompts for visitors to consider what they know, or do not know, about American history, civic engagement, government, and citizenship. The museum frames the work as a reflection on the principles of American government, the rights of American citizens, and pivotal moments in the country’s history.
Tabet, born in 1983 in Aachqout, Lebanon, lives and works in Beirut and is trained as both a sculptor and architect. The museum describes his practice as conceptual and research-based, with work that often examines the relationships between past and present through personal and official histories. The artist has also used site-specific projects to address subjects including accumulation in museums, the rise of technology, and labor and agriculture in the Gulf.
'128 Civics Questions' is a new version of an earlier work, '100 Civics Questions', which the museum says was originally inspired by Tabet’s own experience preparing for the U.S. citizenship exam. During that process, Tabet concluded that the questions, when removed from their original context, could be read in other ways, including as concrete poetry or as open-ended and contradictory prompts. The earlier version was commissioned for the 2022 Whitney Biennial in New York.
The Broad says the new installation reflects revisions made to the Naturalization Civics Test in 2025, when additional questions were added to the study guide and the passing threshold changed from answering six out of 10 questions correctly to 12 out of 20. In the museum’s presentation, that extended exam process underscores the complexities and precarities of obtaining citizenship, including long wait times, high expenses, and a more in-depth study process.
At the Broad, Tabet’s intervention appears as part of 'We Are This Land: Meditations on the Great American Experiment' and extends beyond the museum into the surrounding campus. The museum notes that the work is also paired with the video 'Learning English' from 2022 as part of the artist’s ongoing series 'Becoming American'.
'Rayyane Tabet: 128 Civics Questions' is organized by the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University and curated by Rachel Winter, Ph.D., assistant curator, with support from Nat Swartz, curatorial research assistant, and in partnership with the artist. The museum says the exhibition is supported by the Eli and Edythe Broad Endowed Exhibitions Fund, with additional support from the Alan and Rebecca Ross Endowed Exhibitions Fund.
