[oberlist] Fwd: ANN: Open letter against the closure of the GDR Design Archive

[stefan rusu]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: H-ArtHist (Elsje van Kessel) <vankessel at arthist.net>
Date: Mon, Jul 9, 2012 at 3:42 PM
Subject: ANN: Open letter against the closure of the GDR Design Archive
To: H-ARTHIST at h-net.msu.edu


From: Jessica Jenkins <jessica.jenkins at network.rca.ac.uk>
Date: Jul 9, 2012
Subject: ANN: Open letter against the closure of the GDR Design Archive

The committee of the [German] Society for Design History (GfDG) is
protesting by way of open letter to the Foundation "House of History"
of the Federal Republic of Germany in Bonn, at the plans to close
public access to the Collection of Industrial Design in Berlin.

We would be pleased if you would add your name to the letter by sending
a short mail of support to the GfDG info at gfdg.org and by further
distributing this letter amongst your academic community. Thank you.

Open letter concerning the future of the Industrial Design Collection,
Berlin, to the Foundation "Haus der Geschichte" of the Federal Republic
of Germany, Bonn

The Society for Design History is highly concerned about the future of
the Industrial Design Collection in Berlin. The Collection, which has
been built up over more than 60 years, has been under the patronage of
the Foundation "Haus der Geschichte" of the Federal Republic of Germany
since 2005.

As early as 1950, staff at the Research Institute of the Art School
Berlin Weissensee, under the guidance of Mart Stam, began to collect
exemplary design. The collection continued to grow, under the auspices
of the (East German) Office of Industrial Form Design, up until 1990.
At the time of the closure of the Institute in 1990, the collection
contained around 160 000 documents and design objects, a library, and a
photographic library. Between 1993 and 1995, the Collection staged
exhibitions on design and consumer culture in the GDR, in the
Kulturbrauerei in Berlin Prenzlauerberg, as well as in other cities.
Design from the everyday as well as bequests from East German designers
have enriched the collection.

In spite of support from the German government and from the Foundation
for Industrial and Everyday Culture, the existence of this collection
has been under threat many times in the last two decades. The
Foundation "Haus der Geschichte", patron of the Collection since 2005,
has now taken on the responsibility of the museological care of the
Collection. However, according to the information provided by the
Foundation, the design collection will not be made accessible to the
general public; instead, just a few objects will be selected for a
planned historical exhibition "Everyday Life in the SED Dictatorship".

We call on the Foundation "Haus der Geschichte" to make the Industrial
Design Collection publicly accessible as a design collection. The
Society for Design History proposes the establishment of a centre for
education, memory, controversy and new research initiatives, to serve
designers, eye witnesses, researchers and representatives of the media,
by means of themed presentations.

Gesellschaft für Designgeschichte e. V., im Juni 2012
<info at gfdg.org>
Vorstand: Prof. Dr. Siegfried Gronert, Dr. Wolfgang Schepers, Prof. Dr.
Petra Eisele

Reference / Quellennachweis:
ANN: Open letter against the closure of the GDR Design Archive. In:
H-ArtHist, Jul 9, 2012. <http://arthist.net/archive/3599>.


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