Rarely does a museum show bring the shock of discovery to a familiar topic. Rarer still, when we have studied the subject, even immersed ourselves in its manifestations, and inculcated its lessons in our own worldview. Bauhaus 1919—1933: Workshops for Modernity, an exhibition that debuted at the Museum of Modern Art in New York on November 8 and runs through January 25 (a different version was on display earlier this year in Berlin), orchestrates a coup: We see the familiar Bauhaus through refreshed eyes.

Every architect knows the fundamentals, how Walter Gropius devised a school that combined the visual arts in a transforming way, establishing not studios but workshops that had social and cultural goals beyond the mere aesthetic. In a period of rapid technological advancement, set in the days of the Weimar Republic, the school had profound implications in the development of notions of the Modern. We feel its effects today ­— in architecture, interior design, industrial design, and other disciplines. Yet for all our intellectual knowledge, until this show, many of us had not confronted the Bauhaus viscerally, not felt its freshness or its spirit of inquisitive experimentation or its tangible sense of power and joy.