In 1937, László Moholy-Nagy arrived in Chicago to establish the New Bauhaus, an American version of the German art school dedicated to the principle of intelligent design. No, not that kind of intelligent design.
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Over the next dozen years, the New Bauhaus would undergo seven moves and three name changes before getting absorbed into the IIT Institute of Design in 1949, a little more than two years after Moholy’s death. The school was small, never more than 30 students at a time, but its legacy was far-reaching. Now Young and his Chicago Bauhaus Committee colleagues have organized “Chicago’s Bauhaus Legacy,” an exhibit at the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art, opening August 9, to pay tribute to the New Bauhaus by showing off the work of the artists and designers who taught and studied there between 1937 and 1955.
Why the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art when Moholy was Hungarian and the original Bauhaus was German? The museum did a show on Bauhaus two years ago, and Young and his colleagues kept in touch. When a slot opened in the museum’s schedule, the New Bauhaus was in. It also helped that Stanley Tigerman, a former student at the school, had designed the museum’s facade and that one of the teachers, Alexander Archipenko, was Ukrainian.
Through 9/29
Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art
2320 W. Chicago
773-227-5522
uima-chicago.org free
