Before and After 1933: The International Legacy of the Bauhaus




MoMA Talks: Panel Discussions and Symposia show

Summary: Friday, January 22, 2010 10:00 AM–5:00 PM The legacy of the Bauhaus has been shaped by the tides of the twentieth century. After the school’s forced closing in 1933, many of its faculty and students left Germany for the Americas, Palestine, South Africa, and elsewhere. Through this diaspora, varied understandings of the Bauhaus proliferated, and over many years it served as a key symbol in intellectual and political debates around the world. In the United States, Bauhaus émigrés were influential teachers of several generations of art and architecture students, both drawing on and transforming pedagogical principles developed at the school. In both parts of divided postwar Germany, the Bauhaus played a weighty symbolic role as an emblem of the aspirations of a new German democratic state. In this one-day symposium, scholars offer new perspectives on aspects of the international legacy of the Bauhaus after 1933 through individual presentations and conversations. SYMPOSIUM SCHEDULE Germany and the Diaspora to the East 10:00–10:05 Welcome Glenn Lowry, Director, The Museum of Modern Art Barry Bergdoll, The Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design, The Museum of Modern Art, and co-organizer of Bauhaus 1919–1933: Workshops for Modernity 10:05–10:20 Introduction Leah Dickerman, Curator, Department of Painting and Sculpture, The Museum of Modern Art, and co-organizer of Bauhaus 1919–1933: Workshops for Modernity 10:20–10:40 The Nazi Party’s Strategic Use of the Bauhaus Paul Jaskot, Professor of Art History, Department of the History of Art and Architecture, DePaul University 10:40–11:00 Cold War Legacies: The Bauhaus in Divided Germany Greg Castillo, Associate Professor of Architecture, Department of Architecture, College of Environmental Design, University of California, Berkeley 11:00–11:20 Break 11:20–11:40 The Pale Red Bauhaus and the USSR Juliet Koss, Associate Professor and Chair, Department of Art History, Scripps College 11:40–12:00 Zionism + Bauhaus: The Politics of Architecture and Its Historiography Alona Nitzan-Shiftan, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning, Technion, Israel Institute of Technology 12:00–12:30 Conversation moderated by Leah Dickerman 12:30–2:00 Lunch break The Americas 2:00–2:15 MoMA’s 1938 Bauhaus Exhibition Barry Bergdoll 2:15–2:35 Gropius, Mies, Moholy-Nagy: Traces of the Bauhaus in Cambridge and Chicago Dietrich Neumann, Royce Family Professor for the History of Modern Architecture, Brown University 2:35–2:55 Black Mountain College: An American Bauhaus? Brenda Danilowitz, Chief Curator, The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation 2:55–3:05 The Forgotten Bauhaus: The Design Laboratory, New York City, 1935–1940 Paul Makovsky, Editorial Director, Metropolis magazine 3:05–3:20 Break 3:20–3:40 Erratic Architecture: Circling around the Bauhaus in Gego's Work Monica Amor, Assistant Professor of Art History, Maryland Institute College of Art 3:40–4:00 Hannes Meyer and the Bauhaus-Mexico Connection: Experiences, Criticism, and Influences Raquel Franklin, Head of the Architectural Research Center, Universidad Anahuac-Mexico Norte 4:00–4:40 Debate moderated by Leah Dickerman and Barry Bergdoll 4:40–5:00 Q&A 5:00–7:00 Reception, Bartos Lobby, The Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Education and Research Building