The German city where the Bauhaus was born a century ago is paying tribute to the school behind a string of modern design icons with a new museum meant to anchor it in its turbulent historical context.
The Bauhaus Museum in Weimar, an elegant concrete cube designed by German architect Heike Hanada, showcases items that blurred the lines between artistic and industrial — producing some of the precursors of modern mass design and helping make the Bauhaus influential far beyond its relatively brief existence.
Visitors can admire exhibits such as Peter Keler's cradle made of a blue circle, a yellow triangle and red square, produced in 1922 under the direction of artist Wassily Kandinsky; Wilhelm Wagenfeld's domed table lamp of 1924; Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's steel easy chair and stool from 1929, and early precursors of the fitted kitchen.
But the museum also explores the wider and constantly shifting ambitions of the Bauhaus, which started work in April 1919 under architect Walter Gropius as Germany grappled with its political future after World War I. It reflects the political troubles that forced the school to move twice then close shortly after the Nazis came to power in 1933.
The aim is not just to show off architecture and design but also to see the school and its leading lights "in their diversity, with their contradictions and how they are anchored in the 20th century", said Benjamin-Immanuel Hoff, Thuringia state's culture minister.