From the very beginning, the archive has been a place of active knowledge production – whether in researching the history and impact of the Bauhaus or presenting and communicating it through exhibitions, publications and events. Today, a museum educational programme for all age groups complements these activities. In addition to the permanent exhibition “Bauhaus Collection”, which eloquently conveys the history and visions of the avant-garde school on the basis of original models, furniture, photographs and documents, the museum's exhibition and event programme also includes currently relevant themes and questions of contemporary design.

Around 120,000 people from all over the world visit the building every year. In order to do justice to the increasing number of visitors and the steadily growing collection, a new museum building for the Bauhaus-Archiv / Museum für Gestaltung is being built on the occasion of the Bauhaus anniversary. Walter Gropius' existing building will be renovated in line with conservation practice and will house the archive, library, and collection depots in future.

During the construction period, the temporary bauhaus archive in Berlin-Charlottenburg will be open to visitors. Over the next few years, the Bauhaus-Archiv / Museum für Gestaltung will be experimenting with forms of presentation, cooperation, events, and new content.

For this reason, the exhibition “Versuchsstätte Bauhaus” does not focus primarily on the famed design icons and the masters, but rather the school and the students: the daily reality of learning and teaching between the poles of creative design and industrial prototype production, artistic experiment and economic pressure, educational institution and emancipatory aspiration. The individual thematic sections concentrate on the teaching concept and the instruction provided, on the Bauhaus as a versatile “testing ground”, as a partner that cooperated with industry, and as a bustling and imaginative communicator.

The exhibition derives the Bauhaus design ideas with which we are so familiar today from the historical context, and at the same time does not omit mentioning the crises and constraining factors under which the epoch-making school fought to survive. In a climate of political change and cultural uncertainty, the Bauhaus community, a world-wide network, questioned the customary conventions of teaching, coexistence and gender relations. Similarly, in Dessau the school did not receive unequivocal support, but also faced criticism. “Versuchsstätte Bauhaus” highlights the many conflicts involved in the tussle to ensure art and design gained social relevance.

For the exhibition “Versuchsstätte Bauhaus” in the “Black Box” of the Bauhaus Museum Dessau, curated by Regina Bittner, Dorothée Brill and Wolfgang Thöner, the Berlin office chezweitz developed a scenography of changing modes of showing. It makes the complexity of the Bauhaus school a spatial experience.

The exhibition draws on a unique group of objects – the world’s oldest museum collection of works from the Bauhaus workshops, established by Walter Gropius in the 1920s, which has since grown to approximately 13,000 objects. These include the famous table lamp by Wilhelm Wagenfeld and Carl Jakob Jucker, the teapot by Marianne Brandt, the lattice chair by Marcel Breuer, furniture by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and graphic artworks by Paul Klee, László Moholy-Nagy and Lyonel Feininger. Alongside historical documents never shown before, the exhibition presents the extraordinary development of this influential school of art and design.

The Bauhaus Museum Weimar aims to reinterpret the history of the Bauhaus. It reveals how the Bauhaus initiated crucial processes of change at the start of the 20^th century with respect to society, new forms of coexistence, new technologies, material studies and much more.

Bauhaus-Museum Weimar and Museum Neues Weimar are part of Quarters Weimar Modernism.