Johannes Ebert am 8. April 2018
Eröffnung des China Design Museums in Hangzhou

Grußwort von Johannes Ebert anlässlich der Eröffnung des China Design Museums in Hangzhou
 

Mr Vice Governor CHENG Yuechong, Professor YU Jiang, Professor HANG Jian, Ladies and gentlemen.
 
The ninetieth anniversary of the China Academy of Art and the opening of the new building by Alvaro Siza is a wonderful occasion for me to return to China.

The Goethe-Institut is celebrating its thirtieth anniversary in China this year having been the first foreign cultural institute to come to China in 1988. Together with German and international partners, we promote cultural exchange in dialogue with Chinese institutions, artists and other partners.
Our shared view on current aesthetic and social issues – even if from different perspectives –expands horizons and creates space for new solutions.
 
Design is the best example of this. I would therefore like to congratulate you on this new location of the China Design Museum in Hangzhou. The building by Alvaro Siza underscores the international nature of your institution.
Since 2011, the China Design Museum and the Bauhaus Institute have repeatedly referenced German design history in numerous exhibitions: The German Werkbund, the avant-garde, the Bauhaus, the Hochschule für Gestaltung Ulm were taken up and the objects created by the Bauhaus, which can be regarded as an aesthetic revolution, have been a source of inspiration for design students.
 
On the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of the founding of the Bauhaus in Weimar, five German institutions have joined forces in the bauhaus imaginista research and exhibition project to track the way Bauhaus ideas were transformed by local ideas in other parts of the world.
 
So bauhaus imaginista is about turning the perspective around and looking at the Bauhaus from China, Brazil, Nigeria or India.
For the Bauhaus was not only the source of ideas, but also adopted many ideas from around the world in its experiments.
It is, so to speak, the result of transcultural processes and dialogue. How can we today, in the spirit of the Bauhaus, re-imagine culture as a social project?  That certainly goes very well with one of the chief concepts of the China Academy of Art CAA: “innovation derives from tradition.”

The Goethe-Institut, Berlin’s Haus der Kulturen der Welt and the three Bauhaus institutions from Berlin, Dessau and Weimar are pleased to have the China Design Museum as a partner for the first exhibition in this project. The fact that the bauhaus imaginista exhibition became part of the opening programme underlines our outstanding German-Chinese cooperation.
It builds on longstanding academic collaborations between the China Academy of Art and the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation.
On behalf of all our partners, I would like to sincerely thank the China Academy of Art and the curators of the bauhaus imaginista exhibition.

We are looking forward to a unique exhibition experience in this wonderful new building of the China Design Museum. Thank you.
 
Es gilt das gesprochene Wort.