There were quite a few women at and around the Bauhaus. And in recent years, interest in their work has steadily grown. One persistent myth remains, however: the idea that women at the Bauhaus were confined to the textile workshops. This simplification ignores the fact that women worked across different departments, studying architecture, painting, design, and photography. To push back against that, the Bauhaus-Archiv / Museum für Gestaltung has developed an exhibition that celebrates the women of the Bauhaus through its women photographers. Tonight, New Woman, New Vision. Women Photographers of the Bauhaus at the Museum für Fotografie. The first exhibition under the new director of the Bauhaus-Archiv, Brigitte Franzen, brings together around 300 photographs from the collection, some of whose subjects are famous even if their makers are far less so. On view at the Museum für Fotografie as part of the Kunstbibliothek of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, the exhibition explores questions of belonging, participation, and why we still know so little about these women. At the same time, it challenges familiar assumptions about the Bauhaus and its women artists, bringing figures back into view who were long forgotten or overlooked.
Alongside the many women photographers on view, the exhibition includes works by women artists from the Institute of Design in Chicago, the Bauhaus’s successor institution in the United States. In addition, three contemporary artists, Kalinka Gieseler, Caroline Kynast and Sinta Werner, were invited to place their work in dialogue with the historical material on show. Students from the Nelson Mandela School also contributed audio descriptions for selected works, which can be accessed via QR code. A broad accompanying program will run throughout the exhibition. It’s a look back that does less to supplement than to correct and, above all, to celebrate.
Text: Inga Krumme / Credit: Gertrud Arndt, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2026; Grit Kallin-Fischer, Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin; Lucia Moholy, Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2026
Museum für Fotografie, Jebensstr.2, 10623 Berlin–Charlottenburg; map
New Woman, New Vision. Women Photographers of the Bauhaus, until 04.10.2026.
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