The Artist as Organizer: Reorganizing Modernist Art Production (Habilitation Project, DFG-funded)
Project Description
This Habilitation project investigates the reorganization of modern art production and its profound impact on the shifting hierarchy between the fine and applied arts. It centers on the singular trajectory of textile artist Léna Meyer-Bergner (1906–1981), whose career across diverse systems of labor—from pre-industrial workshops to state-run factories—serves as a decisive unit of analysis—an exceptionally important figure in the international circulation of knowledge technologies, pedagogy, and the material transformation of everyday life.
Meyer-Bergner’s practice spanned a broad spectrum of organizational forms: from coordinating home-weaving operations in Königsberg (1930) and serving as the artistic director of a state-of-the-art upholstery factory with over 500 workers in Stalinist Moscow (1931–1936), to establishing her own carpet manufactory in Geneva (1936–1939). In the early 1940s, she further developed plans to organize textile centers for the indigenous Otomí people in postcolonial Mexico. Meyer-Bergner’s lifelong commitment to the organization of artistic production was decisively shaped by her time at the Bauhaus, precisely during the phase when the school embraced a new concept of art—one founded on scientific principles and its integration with industry.
Academic Framework & Official Titles
Habilitation Project
„Angewandte und bildende Kunst in Spaltung und Verschränkung: Reorganisation der Kunstproduktion und Wertsetzungen in der Moderne am Beispiel von Léna Meyer-Bergner (1906–1981)“
Status: The Habilitation thesis has been successfully accepted for defense by the commission. The teaching demonstration has been successfully passed, and didactic aptitude has been formally established. The final oral examination (Fachvortrag) is scheduled for February 2026.
DFG Research Project
„Léna Meyer-Bergners sozial-transformativer Moderne-Begriff in den globalen gesellschaftlichen Umbrüchen der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts“
Principal Investigator: Dr. Sandra Neugärtner
Funding Period: January 1, 2021 – November 30, 2025
Funding Body: German Research Foundation (DFG)
Project ID: NE 2485/2-1
Related Publications
2026, The Artist as Organizer: Léna Meyer-Bergner and the Restructuring of Art and Labor in Modernism [forthcoming from De Gruyter].
2025, “Im Betrieb: Subordination nach der Abstraktion“, in Kunstchronik. Monatsschrift für Kunstwissenschaft, vol. 78:12 (December), 773–785. DOI: 10.11588/KC.2025.12.114079.
2024, “Generalized Between Icon, Symbol and Index: The Physical Dimension in Isotype and Unicode“, in Proceedings of The Seventh Image Schema Day, eds. Maria M. Hedblom & Oliver Kutz, online (29.11.2024).
2022, “From Revolution to Reformation: From the Figurative Constructivism of the Cologne Progressives to Léna Meyer-Bergner’s Isotype in Mexico as Anti-imperialist Strategy, 1920–1946“, in From Posada to Isotype, from Kollwitz to Catlett: Exchange of Political Print Culture. Germany–Mexico, 1900–1968, Ed. Benjamin Buchloh, Madrid: Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia/TF. Editores, 400–417.
2020, “Anti-fascist Exile, Political Print Media and the Variable Tactics of the Communists in Mexico (1939–1946): The Case of Hannes Meyer and Lena Meyer-Bergner“, in History of Communism in Europe, vol. 11: Transnational Biographies: Destinies at the Crossroads before and after the Cold War, Bukarest: Zeta Books, 41–78 (Published online in 2023).
2020, “Die Sozialisierung des Wissens und das Streben nach Deutungsmacht: Lena Bergners Transfer der Isotype nach Mexiko“, in: bauhaus imaginista Online Journal, Edition 2, Learning From.
Related Presentations
“Im Betrieb: Subordination nach der Abstraktion“
Invited Lecture, Current Research Seminar Series
Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, Munich, Germany, July 16, 2025
“Small Formation: Lines and Alternating Knots as Logistic Inversions“
Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institute, Italy, December 12, 2024
“Von der Renaissance-Perspektive zur Axonometrie: Textile Raumkonzeptionen“
37. Deutscher Kongress für Kunstgeschichte: Bild und RaumFriedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany, March 15, 2024
“Lena Meyer-Bergner’s Commitment to Social Change through the Material Transformation of Everyday Life“
49th Annual Conference Association For Art History
University College London, Great Britain, April 13, 2023
“Lena Meyer-Bergner in Mexiko“
36. Deutscher Kunsthistorikertag: Form Fragen
University of Stuttgart, Germany, March 2, 2022
“Lena Meyer-Bergner’s Teaching of Weaving Technology in Mexico: Attempts to Abolish Post-Colonial Rule“
Science, Culture, and Postcolonial Narratives: Annual Conference of the German Association for Postcolonial Studies
University of Oldenburg, Germany, May 14, 2021
“Lena Meyer-Bergner’s conception of modernism between graphics and weaving, between folk art and technology“
My Bauhaus: Transmedial Encounters
Yale University, New Haven, USA, November 1, 2019
Podcast
Feature: „Léna Meyer-Bergner“
Platform: Bauhaus Faces – The Bauhaus Podcast
Role: Research, Script, and Narration (in a collaborative production with Anja Guttenberger and Viridiana Zavala Rivera)
Release Date: September 18, 2025
➜ Link: Listen here or directly on bauhaus faces
Artistic Practices of Logistic Inversion (Research Project, KHI Florence)
Project Description
This project examines ‘logistic inversions’ as a critical artistic practice within modernism. Using material-based case studies and focusing on the work of Léna Meyer-Bergner, it constructs a counter-narrative to the paradigm of industrial growth by analyzing strategies of decentralization, sufficiency, and material reduction. The project’s objective is a rereading of modernism in the context of contemporary ‘degrowth’ debates, understanding design as a form of socio-economic organization.
Academic Framework
Realized within the framework of a research stay at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max Planck Institute.
Funding: Supported by the Programme for the Internationalization of Female Scholars in the Qualification Phase, Leuphana University Lüneburg.
Funding Period: October 1, 2024 – March 31, 2025
Related Lecture
„Small Formations: Lines and Alternating Knots as Logistic Inversions“
Presented at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz (Palazzo Grifoni Budini Gattai), December 2, 2024: ➜
Convening “art thinking doing art”: Conference and Publication Project
Project Summary
This project investigated the interplay between art education, production, and institutional critique from 1900 to the present. Its centerpiece was a major international conference with scholars from eleven countries, held at the Berlin University of the Arts in June 2023. The project’s findings are being prepared for publication in an edited volume.
Key Outcomes
International Conference: “art thinking doing art,” featuring keynote lectures by Benjamin Buchloh and Tom Holert.
Edited Volume: Toward a New Aesthetics: Institutional Criticism in Art Education from 1900 to Today, to be published with Brill (January 2026).
Project Role & Funding
Role: Conception, planning, and organization (Sandra Neugärtner).
Funding: German Research Foundation (DFG, CRC 1512), Leuphana University Lüneburg, and the Berlin University of the Arts.
Further Details
For the full conference program, speakers, and documentation, please visit the dedicated conference page.➜
Dr. Sandra Neugärtner 