Posts in category ‘Bauhaus’
Bauhaus: from Weimar to the Web
Screenshot of the timeline section of the Bauhaus 1919–1933: Workshops for Modernity website
Though the contributors from our department (Digital Media) might occasionally indulge in geek speak, we wanted to offer a behind-the-scenes glimpse into some of the projects and collaborations in which we are involved across the Museum and beyond.
We are particularly excited about the slew of exhibitions coming up, starting with Bauhaus 1919–1933: Workshops for Modernity, which opens this month. For the exhibition site, we worked with Hello Design in California. We hadn’t worked with them before, but we liked their approach to content and design for the subject matter. Because the Bauhaus has been such an inspiration to so many who came after, we asked Hello what inspired them. How did they create a simple, functional site that captures the spirit of the Bauhaus?
2 Comments | Tags: Adrian Sudhalter, Bauhaus, Dara Kiese, Digital Media, Hello Design
Bauhaus Lounge: When the Couch Matches the Art
Bauhaus Lounge, The Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Education and Research Center
Matching the artwork with the living room couch is one of the perennial concerns of any collector. But when it comes to the Bauhaus, which was as much about designing couches as it was about artworks, finding the right furniture piece shouldn’t be a problem. Or so it seemed to us at the Education Department. During the exhibition Bauhaus 1919–1933: Workshops for Modernity, we imagined turning the reading room space in MoMA’s Cullman building into a Bauhaus Lounge, equipped with Bauhaus furniture for visitors to relax on while they watch a video of a reconstruction of Oskar Schlemmer’s Triadic Ballet or browse through Bauhaus literature. We thought we had enough original Bauhaus-designed chairs lying around MoMA’s buildings that it couldn’t be too hard to put such a lounge together. We do have a Wassily chair (no one remembers where it came from) that sits in the Education offices; we also snatched away a few other chairs from a conference room and two Mies van der Rohe Barcelona chairs from outside of Glenn Lowry’s office waiting area (his office wants them back after the show). Read more
1 Comments | Tags: Architecture, Barry Bergdoll, Bauhaus, Bauhaus 1919-1933: Workshops for Modernity, Design, Education, Gunta Stölzl, Marcel Breuer
Bauhaus: The Graphic Design Department Goes Back to School
Rendering of the title wall for Bauhaus 1919-1933: Workshops for Modernity
In December 1938, hordes of visitors packed the opening of MoMA’s Bauhaus retrospective in the temporary galleries at 14 West Forty-ninth Street in Rockefeller Center. Guests followed painted footprints and abstract graphics on the floor guiding them through the show’s seven hundred items, while reading titles rendered in handsome pin-mounted condensed letterforms. The Bauhaus’s own graphic design and typography legend, Herbert Bayer came to New York to design the exhibition himself. And today, over seventy years later, it was both the Bauhaus and Bayer’s legacy that kept most of MoMA’s Department of Graphic Design awake at night, as we began to design the title wall for Bauhaus 1919–1933: Workshops for Modernity. Read more
11 Comments | Tags: Bauhaus, graphic design, Herbert Bayer, Joost Schmidt, typography
