Germanic Museum Declares End of Post-War Conversion

Charles L. Kuhn '28, curator of the Germanic Museum, disclosed over the weekend that the gradual reconversion of the museum, from a wartime school for chaplains and military governors is now complete. Work was begun late in 1945.

The gothic structure on the corner of Kirkland and Divinity avenues reopened to the public shortly after the Army moved out three and a half years ago but not until last December was Kuhn able to open all the rooms in the building and even then his refurbishing job was not finished.

Since December, Kuhn has been making visits to New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Museum of Non-Objective Painting, and the Fogg Museum to borrow items for his rennovated exhibit. "I found the museums, especially Fogg, tremendously cooperative," Kuhn said, "and the exhibition which we finished preparing last week will be more or less permanent."

Model of Groplus School

One of the exhibitions Kuhn has organized concerns the methods and achievements of the Bauhaus, a German school of design founded in 1919 by Walter Gropius. Gropius is at present a professor of Architecture at Harvard and was one of the designers of the projected Graduate Center.

His school was a strong influence on industrial design, architecture, and methods of art instruction until the Hitler regime suppressed it in 1933, Kuhn explained. A large model of the school was borrowed from the Museum of Modern art.

Two sixteenth century Gothic altar pieces of what Kuhn called, "unusually high quality," came from the Metropolitan Museum.