In 2022, the Resnick Center for Herbert Bayer Studies opened its doors on the campus of the Aspen Institute. Soon after, I was part of the ‘freshmen class’ of Bayer Center employees, doing everything from giving tours and talking to visitors, to fixing toilets and changing water filters. What started as a post-Covid desire to return to some normalcy in an engaging setting with other people has quickly morphed into a position as Communications Manager.

The Bayer Center is an art space dedicated to preserving the legacy of the Austrian-born artist and designer Herbert Bayer (1900–1985), who studied and taught at the Bauhaus before emigrating from Germany to the United States in 1938. Between 1946 and 1975, Bayer was instrumental in Aspen’s postwar revitalization, designing the Institute’s Aspen Meadows campus and shaping the organization’s early aesthetic and programmatic vision.

Our goal at the Bayer Center is to promote a more complete understanding of Bayer—one of the leading figures to translate the Bauhaus movement into an American context—and his contributions to art, design, and architecture. For me, it’s a return to utilizing my degree in Art History, and it’s a chance to dig a bit deeper into Aspen’s unique history and the role that art, design, culture, and commerce played in making it the highly sought-after destination it is today.