Curated by Randall Ross and Molly McCombs

NOVEMBER 7, 2015 - JANUARY 31, 2016

Curators Randall Ross and Molly McCombs of Modernism 101 believe that the Bauhaus and its legacy are relevant to anyone involved in creating, communicating, organizing, or educating. As artists and teachers, the Bauhaüslers created a philosophy that bridged technology and artistry, in hopes of making the modern world a better place. If they didn't succeed in that, they did succeed in setting new standards of artistic excellence. 

Founding Bauhaus director Walter Gropius adopted “Art and Technology—A New Unity” as the school slogan in 1923. That “new unity” only reached full fruition after acceptance and adoption by American academic, artistic, and industrial communities in the years around World War II. Rapid technological, intellectual, social, and artistic innovations between the World Wars all contributed to the birth of a new form of communication: the Design Book. 

This exhibition examines the links between printing, photography, the graphic arts, and fine arts via networks from Berlin to Chicago, and features original work by A. M. Cassandre, Jan Tschichold, László Moholy-Nagy, Herbert Bayer, Paul Rand, and many others. The historic collaborations between trade unionists, the avant-garde, and commercial artists are visually represented by artifacts from the era including books, periodicals, and ephemera drawn from an extensive private collection. 

Over seventy-five original Bauhaus and Bauhaus-influenced manuscripts and documents were displayed in three galleries. The first explored the origins of the Bauhaus in 1919 Weimar, its 1925 relocation to Dessau, and the dispersal of students and faculty during the rise of Nazism. The second showed the assimilation of the European immigrants into American culture and society. The third presented the wide-ranging influence of the Bauhaus idea, including examples of International Style architecture in Shreveport.

“The Bauhaus was not an institution with a clear program. It was an idea. That is the cause of the enormous influence the Bauhaus had on every progressive school around the globe. You cannot do that with an organization, you cannot do that with propaganda. Only an idea spreads so far.” 

— Ludwig Mies van der Rohe