A cool €25M has been set aside to build a major Bauhaus Museum in Dessau, Germany, the second headquarters of the influential design movement started in 1919 by modernism's grandsire Walter Gropius. The new museum in Dessau City Park, which will have a permanent collection of nearly 40,000 Bauhaus objects, will ready in time to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the founding of the rigorous architecture and design school. At the same time, the Bauhaus Archive in Berlin will be spending €56M to open a new museum on the site, and renovate its historic Walter Gropius-designed building.
After the Nazis forced the school to close in 1933, students and teachers like Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, Marcel Breuer, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, and Piet Mondian fanned out around the world, bringing the movement's then-radical teachings about minimalist architecture and pared-down design to a wider audience. Today, millions of buildings and objects owe a debt to the innovative school. The three main exhibitions planned for the 2019 opening will examine the history and impact of the Bauhaus, which was barely supported by the state but became the most iconic German export of the 20th century.
"In Dessau, what will be created is a 'museum in motion' that, with a dynamic exhibition and outreach concept, shows treasures from the collection as well as current positions in ever new spatial and conceptual contexts," said Dr. Claudia Perren, director of the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation. "The Bauhaus in Dessau has an avant-garde tradition, which we will continue with the profile of the new museum."
The Bauhaus Dessau Foundation recently announced an international architecture competition to design the new museum. Proposals will be accepted until April 13, 2015.
· Bauhaus 2019 [official site]
· Bauhaus Museum to Open in 2019 [Architectural Digest]
· All Bauhaus coverage [Curbed National]
Loading comments...