Desk in Exile: A Bauhaus object traversing different modernities

How can a heavy cherrywood desk tell a story of exile and migration? Designed as part of the 1923 Bauhaus exhibition in Weimar, then moved to Dessau where it was integrated into a modern office culture, Walter Gropius’s desk has been in Lincoln, Massachusetts, since 1938, in the children’s room of the family’s private residence. Looking through the lens of the object, the publication reflects the changing conditions of migration and “settling” in the modern age.