The Bauhaus and Harvard
Herbert Bayer, Design for a Multimedia Trade Fair Booth, 1924. Opaque watercolor, charcoal and touches of graphite with collage of cut printed and colored papers on off-white wove paper. Harvard Art Museums/Busch-Reisinger Museum, Gift of the artist, BR48.101. © Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn.
The Bauhaus and Harvard — mounted in conjunction with the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Bauhaus in Weimar, Germany — presents nearly 200 works by 74 artists, drawn almost entirely from the Busch-Reisinger Museum’s extensive Bauhaus collection. Founded in 1919 and closed just 14 years later, the Bauhaus was the 20th century’s most influential school of art, architecture, and design. Harvard University played host to the first Bauhaus exhibition in the United States in 1930, and went on to become an unofficial center for the Bauhaus in America when founding director Walter Gropius joined Harvard’s department of architecture in 1937. Today the Busch-Reisinger Museum houses the largest Bauhaus collection outside Germany, initiated and assembled through the efforts of Gropius and many former teachers and students who emigrated from Nazi Germany, including Anni and Josef Albers, Herbert Bayer, Lyonel Feininger, and László Moholy-Nagy.
The exhibition features rarely seen student exercises, iconic design objects, photography, textiles, typography, paintings, and archival materials. It explores the school’s pioneering approach to art education, the ways its workshops sought to revolutionize the experience of everyday life, the widespread influence of Bauhaus instruction in America, and Harvard’s own Graduate Center (1950), the first modernist building complex on campus, designed by Gropius’s firm The Architects Collaborative. A complementary exhibition installed in an adjacent gallery — Hans Arp’s Constellations II — features one of the site-specific works commissioned for the Graduate Center. A publication inspired by The Bauhaus and Harvard and its related programming is due out in March 2021.
Organized by the Harvard Art Museums. Curated by Laura Muir, Research Curator in the Division of Academic and Public Programs, Harvard Art Museums.
Support for this project is provided by endowed funds, including the Daimler Curatorship of the Busch-Reisinger Museum Fund, the Charles L. Kuhn Endowment Fund, and the Care of the Busch-Reisinger Museum Collection Fund. The publication is supported by the Harvard Art Museums Mellon Publication Funds, including the Carola B. Terwilliger Fund. In addition, exhibition related programming is made possible by the M. Victor Leventritt Fund, which was established through the generosity of the wife, children, and friends of the late M. Victor Leventritt, Harvard Class of 1935. Modern and contemporary art programs at the Harvard Art Museums are made possible in part by generous support from the Emily Rauh Pulitzer and Joseph Pulitzer, Jr., Fund for Modern and Contemporary Art.
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Online Resources
A comprehensive digital resource launched in 2016 provides access to the museums’ more than 32,000 Bauhaus-related objects and shares scholarship on the school’s extensive ties to Harvard and the Greater Boston area.
Learn more about the exhibition in our series of videos on Vimeo, including an introduction by Laura Muir, a recording of artist Judith Raum’s lecture-performance evoking the figure of Bauhaus weaver Otti Berger during the exhibition’s opening celebration, presentations from the symposium “Bauhaus 100: Object Lessons from a Historic Collection,” and more.
Related Exhibitions at Harvard and Beyond
Hans Arp’s Constellations II
February 8, 2019–July 28, 2019
University Research Gallery, Harvard Art Museums
Judith Raum: Raveled Fabrics
February 7, 2019–March 17, 2019
Lightbox Gallery, Harvard Art Museums
The Bauhaus at Home and Abroad: Selections from the Papers of Walter Gropius, Lyonel Feininger, and Andor Weininger
January 15–May 31, 2019
Amy Lowell Room, Houghton Library, Harvard University
Creating Community: Harvard Law School and the Bauhaus
February 4–August 16, 2019
Caspersen Room, Langdell Hall, Harvard Law School
The Bauhaus Studio: Primary Materials and Secondary Sources
April 6–May 5, 2019
Harvard Ed Portal
The Goethe-Institut Boston is promoting Bauhaus centennial events at a range of New England institutions, including Radical Geometries: Bauhaus Prints, 1919–33 on view February 9 to June 23, 2019, at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and Arresting Fragments: Object Photography at the Bauhaus on display March 28 to September 1, 2019, at the MIT Museum.
Related Publications
Object Lessons: The Bauhaus and Harvard
Founded by architect Walter Gropius (1883–1969) in 1919, the Bauhaus was the 20th century’s most influential school of art, architecture, and design. After the school was shuttered under pressure from the Nazis in 1933, many Bauhaus artists brought their innovative practices and teaching methods to the United States. Gropius himself accepted a position at Harvard, where he would help establish a collection of Bauhaus material that has since grown to more than 30,000 objects—the largest such collection outside Germany. Harvard in turn became an unofficial center for the Bauhaus in America. Written by established and emerging voices in the field, the scholarship presented here expands on the special link between the two institutions, while highlighting understudied aspects of the Bauhaus, such as weaving, photography, and art made by women. Accompanied by beautiful illustrations—some of never-before-published objects—this book yields fascinating insights for Bauhaus devotees and design aficionados. A full reproduction of the six-page catalogue produced by the Harvard Society for Contemporary Art for its 1930 exhibition—the first Bauhaus exhibition in the United States—is included at the back of the book.
Laura Muir is Associate Director of Academic and Public Programs and the Louis Miller Thayer Research Curator at the Harvard Art Museums; she is former assistant curator of the Busch-Reisinger Museum (2001–14). With contributions by Francesca G. Bewer, Annie Bourneuf, Katarina Burin, Madeline Corona, Susan D. Costello, Katherine Eremin, Laura A. Frahm, Teri Hensick, Fritz Horstman, Kristie La, Laura Muir, Georgina Rayner, Jeffrey Saletnik, Robin Schuldenfrei, Kate Smith, Jordan Troeller, Melissa Venator, and Robert Wiesenberger.
Object Lessons was inspired by the exhibition The Bauhaus and Harvard and its related programming offered during Spring/Summer 2019, which coincided with the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Bauhaus. Explore more than 32,000 Bauhaus-related objects in the museums’ online resource The Bauhaus.
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A Painting with Presence
The largest work in The Bauhaus and Harvard, Herbert Bayer’s Verdure required special efforts as it was cleaned and installed.
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The female-dominated Bauhaus weaving workshop continues to inspire artists and researchers today.
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In celebration of the Bauhaus centennial, one of the largest paintings in the Harvard Art Museums collections was cleaned and restored while being studied alongside preparatory works in the collections.
Exhibition Objects
