Gropius House

Birthday Card: Alexander and Lida Doerner, 1943

Alexander Dorner was a German art historian and museum director. In Germany, he worked with many Modernists, including the Bauhauslers and Russian Constructivists, making some of the first Museum acquisitions of work by El Lissitsky and Lazlo Moholy-Nagy work.  After the Nazi “Degenerate Art” exhibition of 1936, Dorner emigrated to the United States, where he was Director of the Rhode Island School of Design Museum from 1938-1941. In that position, he continued to champion the ideas of modernism and progressive education that formed his friendship with Gropius and the other Bauhauslers.