Preserving Our Built Environment

Submitted by Susan Miller on Mon, 01/05/2009 - 13:41.

Writings about preserving the built environment in NEO and beyond.

Bauhaus Breuer update

Great work, Susan! I am so glad you organized the Breuer postsposts--Max is doing great work in Atlanta, too. 

I know that it would help to have a hitchhiker's guide to the content on this site...but it's getting there.

See also from Max Eternity:

"The Bauhaus Effect" that was published last month in ArtWorks Magazine, available at Barnes & Noble. Among other sites, I did make sure to make mention of the Ameritrust Tower in Cleveland. 

An excerpt of the article can be read here. Though as well, I wrote about some things that I don't think many people realize about the Bauhaus school, it's former faculty and student body, which is that a lot of women were involved. 

Our national collective of art historians and academics who speak on the issue of Modernism, especially as it relates to the Bauhaus (1919 to 1933) somehow fail to mention things like up to 50% of the student body, at various points in the institutions existence, consisted of women, or how about this, the fact that Lily Reich, for instance, was at one point the teacher in charge of interior design, which included teaching furniture making.

That would be unusual today, seeing a woman giving instruction on making heavy wooden and metal furnuture, cabinets at whatnot, so imagine how radical it was all those years back.

The fact that so many people from the Bauhaus taught and built buildings in the Southeast, seems to get overlooked too.

Another thing that gets overlooked is the African influence found in the development of European Modernism. 

Denise Murrell wrote of this @ The Met's Heilbrunn Timeline, but just Google search the African Chair, created as a collaboration between Marcel Breuer and Gunt Stölzl.

AND

Dear Colleagues,

A special thanks goes out to art Historian, curator and photographer, Susan B, who took  a nice group of recent photos of the "

Marcel Breuer Retrospective" exhibition, currently on display at the Breuer designed, Central Library in Downtown Atlanta. The exhibit, co-hosted at the Museum of Design Atlanta and The Atlanta-Fulton Central Public Library has been on display since October of 2009, and will soon come to a close on January 16, 2010.

Since its opening, there has been a steady stream of lectures and presentations ongoing at the building. Yet beyond that, not just in Atlanta, much has been written and said about the legacy of the Bauhaus school, where Breuer studied and taught, as this year the now defunct institution celebrates its 90th Anniversary. 

Click here to continue reading and to view images of the exhibition installation.