Tour: The Bauhaus and Harvard

Join us for an in-depth tour of our special exhibition The Bauhaus and Harvard, on view from February 8 to July 28, 2019.

The Bauhaus and Harvard exhibition—mounted in conjunction with the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Bauhaus in Weimar, Germany—presents nearly 200 works by more than 70 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 later became an unofficial center for the Bauhaus in the United States when founding director Walter Gropius joined Harvard’s Department of Architecture in 1937.

The exhibition features rarely seen student exercises, iconic design objects, photographs, 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). Designed by Gropius’s firm, the Graduate Center was the first modernist building complex on campus. 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.

Exhibition tours are offered through the run of the exhibition. Visit our calendar for more information about these and other Bauhaus-related programs.

Free with museums admission. This tour is limited to 15 people and tickets are required. Ten minutes before the tour, tickets will become available at the admissions desk.

Please meet in the Calderwood Courtyard, in front of the digital screens between the shop and the admissions desk. Museums staff will be on hand to collect tickets.

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Explore more about the Bauhaus centenary here. 

Support for the Bauhaus exhibition 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. 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.