Bauhaus Archiv

The museum Bauhaus Archive was founded in Darmstadt, Germany, in 1960 by Hans Maria Wingler with the purpose of giving a new home to the production of the Bauhaus institute that after its closure in 1933 had gone lost around the world.

With the support of Walter Gropius and other members of the Bauhaus, the formation of a collection started in 1961 at the Ernst-Ludwig-Haus in Darmstadt.

Meant to be the container of the production of the Bauhaus, institute of architecture, design, and craft founded by the architect Walter Gropius in the German city of Weimar in 1919, the archive would feature some of the institute's creations.

Soon followed the realisation of exhibitions, publications, and catalogues. In 1968 the Bauhaus Archiv gave a noticeable contribution to the organisation of an exhibition called "50 Years Bauhaus" which obtained worldwide interest. As the gathered material was constantly increasing, the possibility of building a proper museum was taken into consideration. Walter Gropius developed projects about it, but the construction of the museum's building in Darmstadt did not take place. At some point the Land Berlin accepted to host the museum and offered the necessary financial help for its construction. In 1971 Bauhaus Archiv moved to Berlin in a temporary location, and in 1976 the construction of the museum's building started.

The museum, in addition to the permanent collections, also hosted numerous temporary exhibitions. These were dedicated to the Bauhaus artists, architects, and designers Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Johannes Itten, Georg Muche and Herbert Bayer, Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, Hannes Meyer, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Other hosted exhibitions were about specific themes from workshops of craft, photography, and graphic design .

The activity of the Bauhaus Archiv, now among the most important museums in the world, focuses both on the topics of the institute, and on the issues concerning contemporary art, architecture, and design.
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links:
www.bauhaus.de