Bauhaus and MCAD: A Conversation with Gretchen Gasterland-Gustafsson

What are the similarities—both architecturally and academically—between MCAD and Bauhaus?

In terms of architecture, MCAD like the Dessau Bauhaus enjoys a purpose built, light-filled structure with lots of classroom, studio, and workshop space, in a campus that links separated building areas with a “bridge” (though in Minnesota, we say “skyway”). One difference is that the Dessau Bauhaus bridge housed the administrative offices on two levels, whereas MCAD’s skyway functions as a passage rather than a destination (most of the time).

MCAD’s design also incorporated the older Morrison Building rather than destroying it in favor of a new structure. Both schools include dormitories for students to live on campus and adjacent to their workshops in order to heighten a sense of working community. 

The Bauhaus curriculum and MCAD’s both emphasize workshop based, hands-on making that seeks to foster the creative gifts of developing artists and designers. Both schools’ curricula and activities enrich the workshop model with structured academic classes, visiting artist and scholar lectures, as well as more informal gatherings and parties designed to create a cohesive and productive community among the students, faculty, and staff.

What would you say is the most significant thing MCAD has adopted into its system in relation to Bauhaus?

Like the Weimar Bauhaus, MCAD accepts incoming first year students who all take a series of foundation courses to help determine which workshop, or major, is best suited to their creative goals. While the Weimar Bauhaus began under the passionate, enthusiastic teaching of Johannes Itten initially, the foundation course had to adapt to the changing conditions of the school and its cultural milieu, and the foundation education was strengthened by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and Joseph Albers as they made changes to Itten’s strong blueprint, while leaving some of his more problematic ideas behind. At MCAD, especially in my department, Liberal Arts, we too have been active in adapting our foundation courses to suit our current situation and our student’s needs.

Why do you think MCAD has adopted these things into its structure?

Both the Bauhaus and MCAD share the goal of educating the whole student and serving the diverse needs of this creative population. In order to best know our students and their gifts, the students need to have the opportunity to try out various approaches to creativity and making at the outset of their education, to help them all make the right choices for how and where they want to make their marks on the world.

What is a key difference between Bauhaus and MCAD?

One very relevant difference lies in MCAD’s longevity! The Bauhaus in Germany survived under near constant economic and political duress for only fourteen years, from 1919 to 1933. In contrast, MCAD actually predates the Bauhaus if we count the Minneapolis School of Fine Arts with its 1886 founding date. MCAD has thrived for 134 years, and we hope to be here for many more. 

Bauhaus Building Blocks by Alma Siedhoff-Buscher

Another important difference is that MCAD does not use gender as a means to organize our students into majors. Anyone who has studied the Bauhaus knows that women were largely pushed towards the weaving workshop, regardless of their own interests, though Alma Siedhoff-Buscher and Marianne Brandt were notable exceptions to this “rule.” MCAD does not have a weaving—or what we would probably now call a fibers—major, but we do have a loom and students who are interested in and produce weaving as part of their creative work. We are lucky to be able to accommodate these interests within the majors that we have, thanks to our talented and flexible faculty members. MCAD does not seek to impart any doctrinal form-color correspondence theory, though Wassily Kandinsky’s synesthetically derived system is fascinating! 

We must also appreciate that MCAD thankfully retains our fine arts disciplines like painting and sculpture without the need to subsume them under an umbrella discipline like architecture in order to make a bid for economically instrumental relevance. This is one of the benefits of having an art and design school here and now, and not in war torn Weimar Germany.

Why do you think many art schools around the world have adopted characteristics from Bauhaus into their curriculum?

The Bauhaus was a compelling model for art education because it strove to break from the salon education model, simply repeating the past and contributing to a compulsive historical march of styles, even if what we now recognize as a Bauhaus style did eventually emerge from what was taught there. Setting some of the doctrinal teachings aside, the method of accepting students who wish to contribute their creative thinking and making abilities and helping all of them hone their varied gifts through directed study opens up so many possibilities. The utopian aspirations of the Bauhaus education as a way to infuse art through design for the improvement of everyday life remains inspirational and utterly relevant even today. We need creative minds and hands to help us all achieve a better future, inclusive of everyone.

Do you think Bauhaus developed the best structure for an art school?

This is a really difficult question for me to answer because the structure of the Bauhaus education changed continually under its brief 14-year existence. By the time Ludwig Mies van der Rohe became the final director of the school, it had become essentially a school of architecture, and Mies was just training acolytes in his own design system. I am grateful that this final form of the Bauhaus has not been the most inspirational structure for art and design schools that followed. For me, the early Weimar Bauhaus—without the cult-like mysticism of Itten’s Mazdaznan beliefs and the barely disguised racist theories therein, and without the sexism of designating gender as a marker for specific kinds of interest and talent—but with all of the messy, joyful, cross-disciplinary experimentation and cooperation in the arts, crafts, building, theater, and design is the most exciting model for what an art school can be. This Bauhaus ideal that Walter Gropius conceived of as a community of creative thinkers and makers still holds a great deal of promise, from my point of view as an educator.

Bauhaus’ legacy will be carried on for many years to come and I think it is important to remember that all ideas come from somewhere, and they’re worth investigating, especially when it comes to where you’re getting your education from. There are a lot of Bauhaus-inspired designs all around the MCAD campus to check out.

Special thanks to Dr. Gretchen Gasterlund-Gustafsson.