In 1938, MoMA issued a press release informing New York City editors that on December 7 the museum would open “what will probably be considered its most unusual exhibition, and certainly one of its largest”. That exhibition was Bauhaus: 1919–1928, a sweeping survey of the German school of art and design with its unparalleled influence. Nearly 700 examples of the school's output were shown, including works in textiles, glass, wood, canvas, metal and paper. It celebrated the remarkable creativity and productivity of the Bauhaus, forced to close under Nazi Party pressure just five years earlier. The scale and scope of this tribute indicated the school's importance to MoMA's development: it had provided a model for the museum's multi-departmental structure and inspired its multidisciplinary presentation of photography, architecture, painting, graphic design and theatre.