Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center and BlackBird Frame & Art present…

GOING UPSTREAM:
THE BAUHAUS IN WEIMAR, DESSAU AND BERLIN

A lecture/presentation by Margret Kentgens-Craig

Thursday, November 30, 7:30p.m.

$7 admission / $5 members of BMCM+AC and students w/ID

…let us create a new guild of craftsmen, without the class distinctions which raise an arrogant barrier between craftsman and artist. Together let us conceive and create the new building of the future which will embrace architecture and sculpture and painting in a single unity, and which will rise one day towards heaven from the hands of a million workers like the crystal symbol of a new faith.

-----Walter Gropius, Bauhaus founder, from the Bauhaus Manifesto

On Thursday, Nov. 30th at 7:30 p.m. noted art historian and author Margret Kentgens-Craig will speak about the origin and development of the Bauhaus School of Design in Germany. Over its brief fourteen-year history, the Bauhaus was located in three different German cities and had three different directors. Despite these potential obstacles, the Bauhaus pioneered new ways of thinking about art and industry and the potential for partnership and collaboration between the two.

Founded in Weimar, Germany in 1919 by visionary architect Walter Gropius, the Bauhaus was a legendary school of art and design that had an enormous influence on modern architecture as well as the fine and applied arts. Instruction at the Bauhaus was based on the idea of finding unity between art, craft and technology so that artists, craftspeople and industry could form partnerships for the creation and production of well-designed products for everyday living.

The Bauhaus had eight areas of instruction, or workshops, including the furniture workshop, the photography workshop, the weaving workshop and the print & advertising workshop. Using this workshop-based educational approach as a guiding philosophy, the Bauhaus professors and students tended toward experimentation and innovation. It attracted some of the leading artists of its time to serve on the faculty: Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Josef Albers, Oskar Schlemmer, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, and Lyonel Feininger among many.

In 1933, with the rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany and the growing threat to artists, intellectuals and Jews, the Bauhaus was closed. Many people associated with the Bauhaus emigrated to America and found a safe haven in the newly founded Black Mountain College. Josef Albers and his wife Anni, a weaver, came to Black Mountain and became core members of the BMC community until 1949 when Josef left to head the Dept. of Design at Yale. Black Mountain College carried on many of the ideas and practices of the Bauhaus in its classes. This presentation by Margret Kentgens-Craig will explore the fascinating story of the Bauhaus as an important and formative predecessor of Black Mountain College.

Co-Sponsored by BlackBird Frame & Art.

This presentation is held in conjunction with the exhibition THINKING AHEAD: Progressive Design + Black Mountain College on view at the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center until December 30, 2006.

THINKING AHEAD: Progressive Design + Black Mountain College received support from the North Carolina Arts Council, The Mary Duke Biddle Foundation, AIA Asheville, Mobilia, BlackBird Frame & Art, PBC & L Architecture, and the UNCA Office of Cultural & Special Events.

The exhibition and its related programming are part of a community wide celebration of the importance and influence of Black Mountain College including programming by the Asheville Art Museum, the Asheville Symphony, the Diana Wortham Theater, and UNC-Asheville.