Versuchsstätte Bauhaus. The Collection

In Jan­u­ary 2018, chezweitz began work­ing with the cura­tors and project part­ners to devel­op the con­cept for the new col­lec­tion pre­sen­ta­tion for the Bauhaus Muse­um Dessau. Now, the Bauhaus year 2019 is reach­ing its cli­max for us with the open­ing. ​“Bauhaus Exper­i­men­tal Site” is the par­a­dig­mat­ic title of the exhi­bi­tion, which pri­mar­i­ly sub­sumes the spir­it of the edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tion and an exper­i­men­tal space that has had and con­tin­ues to have an influ­ence on all areas of free and applied art and archi­tec­ture worldwide.

The path to design­ing this impor­tant exhi­bi­tion began with the big ques­tion that chezweitz and the cura­to­r­i­al team around Regi­na Bit­tner and Dorothée Brill asked them­selves: How can the spir­it of exper­i­men­ta­tion be brought to life in an exhibition?

The rad­i­cal nature of the Bauhaus exper­i­ments is already evi­dent in the north­ern area with great force. A float­ing space for think­ing and exper­i­ment­ing made of light, lay­ered mem­branes and per­me­able per­fo­rat­ed sheets con­tains the exper­i­men­tal objects and ques­tions of the Bauhaus when it opened in Dessau in 1926. The scenog­ra­phy once again draws the mag­ic and irri­ta­tion of the new from the exhibits and con­trasts them in the con­text of the often pub­licly defam­a­to­ry state­ments and resistance.

In the cen­tral exhi­bi­tion hall we encounter a unique, cura­to­r­i­al and design trip­tych: school — teacher/​student — factory.

The cen­tral body here is the ​“Hori­zon Fac­to­ry”, a bright­ly col­ored, mod­u­lar struc­ture that, as a cen­tral axis, trans­forms the 50 m long black box of the muse­um into the force field of the Dessau school with great sculp­tur­al pow­er. The white basic band float­ing in front of the wall spans the field of the mutu­al rela­tion­ships between teach­ers, stu­dents and school in the room. The dia­log­i­cal­ly designed teacher-stu­dent tables rhyth­mize the space between the basics and the Hori­zon Fac­to­ry. The spe­cial qual­i­ty of the Dessau col­lec­tion, which is pre­sent­ed to vis­i­tors in great vari­ety, is also evi­dent in its fine­ly designed dis­plays. The life and work with­in the Dessau school can be expe­ri­enced impres­sive­ly in this triad.

The final south room of the muse­um places the col­lec­tion pur­chase of 1976 in the spa­tial cura­to­r­i­al cen­ter. A vol­ume of trans­par­ent col­ored walls opens the vis­i­tor’s view of slen­der white wall ste­les stretched between floor and ceil­ing, which exhib­it that pur­chase and illus­trate the step towards the muse­al­iza­tion of the Bauhaus in Dessau. Along the col­ored fil­ter walls, the vis­i­tor expe­ri­ences the active recep­tion his­to­ry and net­work­ing of the Bauhaus peo­ple up to the present day. The fil­ters become a sym­bol of the dif­fer­ent, time-bound views of the Bauhaus.

THE BAUHAUS MUSE­UM DESSAU WILL BE MUSE­UM OF THE YEAR 2020

We are delight­ed that the Bauhaus Muse­um in Dessau, with the col­lec­tion pre­sen­ta­tion we designed, has been named Muse­um of the Year 2020 by AICA Deutsch­land e.V. (Asso­ci­a­tion Inter­na­tionale des Cri­tiques d’Art) and its art crit­ics. And we are extreme­ly hon­ored that we, as a scenog­ra­phy office, can be a deci­sive part of this unique project and its success.

The jury jus­ti­fied its deci­sion not only with the ​“cul­tur­al revi­tal­iza­tion” of the city cen­ter, which was bad­ly dam­aged in World War II, but above all with the inno­v­a­tive exhi­bi­tion con­cept. Not only are the well-known Bauhaus icons once again placed in the cen­ter, but the gen­e­sis of the idea of​the Bauhaus is also brought to the fore. It is shown, among oth­er things, based on the rela­tion­ship between teacher and stu­dent, thus empha­siz­ing the school and teach­ing char­ac­ter of the Bauhaus, in which the cre­ative pow­er of cre­ation lay. The stu­dents’ work pro­vides a clear insight into the intel­lec­tu­al inner work­ings and the diver­si­ty of crafts­man­ship at the uni­ver­si­ty. ​“Bauhaus as a test­ing ground. The col­lec­tion as the title of the muse­um’s per­ma­nent exhi­bi­tion sums this up,” says the jury’s statement.