When Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius was preparing to leave the small town of Weimar, Germany due to pressure from the Nazis, he hand selected 168 objects for safekeeping. Including ceramics, metalwork, furniture and rugs, this collection is being exhibited together for the first time. 

As design enthusiasts across the world celebrate the influential Bauhaus movement's centenary, a new museum, for which Gropius' selections will form its basis, is opening in the school's birthplace of Weimar, Germany. Welcoming its first guests over the weekend, the new Bauhaus Museum will be a permanent home for the school's 13,000 piece collection of works by Gropius, Hannes Meyer, Mies van der Rohe, Paul Klee, László Moholy-Nagy, and others. 

Designed by Berlin-based architect Heike Hanada, the $30 million museum will show off their collection of minimalist objects focusing on the early days of the school known for its form-follows-function philosophy. But, it will also reflect on the political troubles that expelled the school out of the small German town back in 1925. 

With the new Bauhaus Museum, the cultural institution hopes to convey the pioneering spirit of the early years while positioning the Bauhaus firmly in the 21st century. "We have opened a new window-for the presentation of the Bauhaus, its prehistory in Weimar, and its enormous impact after it was expelled from Weimar" said Hellmut Seemann, president of the Klassik Stiftung Weimar, which owns and operates the place. Its emergence 100 years ago reminds us, he adds, "that we, too, are the designers of our world and must remain so."

The Bauhaus emerged during a time of turbulence and rising extremism not too different from today. In this way, the museum's opening in Weimar is an overdue homecoming for the most influential school of art and design of the 20th century. The Bauhaus, characterized by the museum's curator Ute Ackermann as "the courage to have a vision and to experiment," is finally getting a befitting place.