The Shakers: A World in the Making
The Shakers: A World in the Making
07.06.2025 – 28.09.2025
Vitra Design Museum
How did an 18th-century American free church inspire generations of artists, architects and designers around the world? The Shakers were a religious group for whom design and architecture were an expression of beliefs surrounding community, labour and social equality. The new exhibition »The Shakers: A World in the Making« examines how this resulted in meticulously crafted furniture and vernacular architecture that continue to resonate centuries later. Bringing together a wide range of Shaker furniture, architectural elements, tools and commercial goods, paired with newly commissioned works by contemporary artists and designers, »The Shakers: A World in the Making« reveals the complex social, material and spiritual context that created the »Shaker style«, and what possibilities its values offer today. The exhibition is organised by the Vitra Design Museum, the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Institute of Contemporary Art Philadelphia, and the Wüstenrot Foundation in collaboration with Shaker Museum.
An exhibition organised by the Vitra Design Museum, the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Institute of Contemporary Art Philadelphia, and the Wüstenrot Foundation, in collaboration with Shaker Museum.
Image: Key Visual »The Shakers: A World in the Making« © Vitra Design Museum, graphic design: A Practice For Everyday Life based on photos by Alex Lesage
Science Fiction Design: From Space Age to Metaverse
Science Fiction Design: From Space Age to Metaverse
18.05.2024 – 10.05.2026
Vitra Schaudepot
Numerous science fiction films – from Star Trek to 2001: A Space Odyssey to Blade Runner – are populated by classic designs that have shaped our image of the future. In reverse, many designers of objects destined for some type of imagined future seek inspiration in the genre of science fiction. The fascinating dialogue between science fiction and design is the subject of a new exhibition in the Vitra Schaudepot. Under the title »Science Fiction Design: From Space Age to Metaverse«, over 100 objects from the museum’s collection will be staged in a futuristic display by the Argentine visual artist and designer Andrés Reisinger. Supplemented by selected works from the realms of film and literature, the show presents a range of examples from the early twentieth century to the so-called Space Age of the 1960s and ’70s, and even further to recent design objects that have been conceived exclusively for the virtual worlds of the metaverse.
Image:
Andrés Reisinger, The Shipping, 2021
© Reisinger Studio
Barragán Gallery
Barragán Gallery
Vitra Schaudepot
Luis Barragán (1902–1988) is widely regarded as the most important Mexican architect of the twentieth century. Since 1996, the architect’s professional estate has been in the care of the Barragan Foundation, located in Birsfelden, near Basel in Switzerland. Over the past two decades, a small team of researchers under the leadership of architectural historian Federica Zanco has systematically evaluated and catalogued the archival documents. As part of a newly established partnership between the Barragan Foundation and the Vitra Design Museum, this material has moved to new premises on the Vitra Campus. The Barragán Archive is now located in close proximity to the Vitra Schaudepot. This includes a state-of-the-art repository for the documents, a study room for visiting researchers, and the Barragán Gallery, a thematic exhibition space. The gallery show presents drawings, photographs and other material from the Barragán Archive, together with biographical details and an illustrated chronology of modern architecture in Mexico. This ensemble of documents and supplementary information illuminates Barragán’s life and work in a larger context.
Image: Rooftop terrace of Luis Barragán’s residence at 14 Calle Francisco Ramírez (Mexico City, 1948), photograph taken by Armando Salas Portugal in the 1960s. © Barragan Foundation / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2022
Wunderkammer
Wunderkammer
Visitors can experience the Wunderkammer exclusively as part of a public guided tour. Registration here.
Another attraction on the Vitra Campus, the »Wunderkammer« presents spellbinding mise-en-scènes featuring more than one thousand action figures from the collection of Rolf Fehlbaum, Chairman Emeritus of Vitra. This includes robots, space toys, comic book characters, folk art, and advertising, often created by anonymous artists and designers. The majority of these objects were made after the Second World War and bear all the marks of their period’s optimistic faith in the future. All of them are products of a pop culture that still fascinates millions of children and grown-ups today.
More information
Image: Objects from the Rolf Fehlbaum collection at the Wunderkammer,
photo: Bettina Matthiessen
