The price of history – What is the Bauhaus worth (today)?
Bauhaus Dessau Foundation
February 2 - May 20, 2001
The price of history – What is the Bauhaus worth (today)? is the title of the new exhibition in which the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation tells the apparently familiar story of the Bauhaus from 1919 to 1933 and its worldwide reception from a new angle. Almost all the items on display are taken from the collection of the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation and open up a hitherto unknown perspective on the "modern classics” created at the Bauhaus. The exhibition asks about the system of values which has made Bauhaus "originals”, including early series products, almost unaffordable collectors’ items today and sustains a lively trade in "genuine” and "fake” copies. It also asks why some designs by Bauhaus members have – deservedly or undeservedly? –faded into oblivion while others have stolen the limelight.
The exhibition title is deliberately ambiguous and provocative since it seeks to put up for discussion the criteria for economic evaluations and the ways in which museums present items from the past. The dividing line is becoming ever thinner between the noble mandate of preserving and passing on cultural values und mundane money-making in which art is just another commodity. This is certainly true of the Bauhaus which has – wrongly – become synonymous with the Neues Bauen movement of the 1920s and whose name, having become a mark of design quality today, is often used for dubious purposes.
As soon as works of art or artists’ names are admitted to the "sacred precincts” of a leading museum or a public collection, their higher value makes them objects of investment among private collectors who are not afraid to take risks in the quest for profit. The budget available for new purchases by public institutions – if they have one at all – leaves museum staff powerless in the face of the laws governing the art investment market.
Museums which focus on education are increasingly losing ground to exhibitions which promise adventure. This trend, too, has changed the criteria for evaluating art and cultural assets. Perfectly staged, this new type of exhibition entertainment merges all exhibits into a holistic work of art and turns them into cult objects. Even works which art historians consider insignificant come to share in the glamour and can be sold for correspondingly high prices.
Straddling as it does the frontier where art meets everyday life, the Bauhaus is the right place and addresses the right issues to analyse the phenomena described above. More then three hundred items from the Bauhaus Dessau collections will be selected for the exhibition and presented in alphabetical order with brief comments. Visitors to the Bauhaus exhibition will have a chance to experience door handles, cantilevered chairs and woven fabrics as well as works of art from Wassily Kandinsky to Reinhold Rossig in a new context.
BAUHAUS DESSAU FOUNDATION
Gropiusalle 38, 06846 Dessau
