Letters

09/02/2009 10:00 PM


No Comments - Add Your Comment


Save Chicago's Gropius buildings

Walter Gropius (“The battle of Walter Gropius,” Aug. 20) is one of the most important architects of the last century. Persecuted by Nazi Germany, he found, in 1937, a safe haven in the USA, where he could teach at Harvard.

The buildings he realized in Germany are today landmarks, protected by the law. Gropius was also the founder, in 1919, of the “Bauhaus” in Weimar. Later, the group was forced to move to Dessau in 1924/25. This year Bauhaus celebrates its 90th anniversary.

The Bauhaus was very important also for the founding of the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1929. The young student and art historian Alfred H. Barr, in 1929, the first director of MoMA, visited the Bauhaus in Dessau in 1927, at the age of 25. He could talk to Gropius, Klee, Feininger, Kandinsky, all teaching then in Dessau.

In 1938 Walter Gropius, now a good friend of Alfred Barr, curated an exhibition on Bauhaus in the MoMA, on behalf of Barr. Walter Gropius later became an American citizen. He built many of his very important buildings in the USA and I believe the Gropius buildings should be landmarks, especially as a younger generation of architects rediscovers him.

This year, the Martin-Gropius-Bau is presenting an exhibition on the Bauhaus, which was curated by the three big Bauhaus institutions in Germany: Klassik-Stiftung-Weimar, Bauhaus Dessau, Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin. It is the biggest Bauhaus exhibition ever, with 1,000 objects on display and many works by Walter Gropius.

The exhibition attracts more than 2,000 visitors each day, including many visitors from foreign countries. There is a great interest to find out the important role Gropius played in the history of Bauhaus.

The exhibition is being presented later in New York, where it opens on Nov. 8, 2009 in the MoMA, as a celebration of its 80th birthday. This is a great honour for the founder of the Bauhaus, Walter Gropius.

Gereon Sievernich
Director, Martin-Gropuis-Bav,
Berlin





No Comments - Add Your Comment