page_title: Vitra Design Museum
section_title: Collection and activities
hierarchical_section_title: Vitra Design Museum / Collection and activities
caption_attribution_description: Cabriolet Bed by Joe Cesare Colombo.
context_page_description: The Vitra Design Museum is a privately owned museum for design in Weil am Rhein, Germany.
  Former Vitra CEO, and son of Vitra founders Willi and Erika Fehlbaum, Rolf Fehlbaum founded the museum in 1989 as an independent private foundation. The Vitra corporation provides it with a financial subsidy, the use of Vitra architecture, and organizational cooperation.
context_section_description: The museum's collection, focusing on furniture and interior design, is centered on the bequest of U.S. designers Charles and Ray Eames, as well as numerous works of designers such as George Nelson, Alvar Aalto, Verner Panton, Dieter Rams, Jean Prouvé, Richard Hutten and Michael Thonet. It is one of the world's largest collections of modern furniture design, including pieces representative of all major periods and styles from the beginning of the nineteenth century onwards.
  These works, originally the private collection of Rolf Fehlbaum, are now permanently on display at the newly completed Schaudepot building on the Vitra premises. In addition, the museum puts on temporary exhibitions in the main building, often with loans from other collections. In turn, parts of the collection are lent to other institutions around the world.
  In addition, the museum produces workshops, publications and museum products, as well as maintaining an archive, a restoration and conservation laboratory, and a research library. It also organises guided tours of the Vitra premises, a major attraction to those interested in modern architecture. The museum produced the travelling exhibition 'Rudolf Steiner - Alchemy of the Everyday', a major retrospective exhibition drawn from its own collection and borrowed exhibits, coinciding with the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the birth of its subject.
caption: Cabriolet Bed, from an exposition of works by Joe Cesare Colombo.
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