1947: THE MUSEUM DIAL
AN ICON OF MODERN DESIGN
The Movado Museum Watch traces its roots to the beginnings of the modern design movement and the group of international artists who founded the Bauhaus School in 1919. “Simplicity, tastefulness, function” was their dictum. One of its purest expressions was the black watch dial defined by a single gold dot, designed by American artist Nathan George Horwitt in 1947.
 
“We do not know time as a number sequence,” Horwitt said, "but by the position of the sun as the earth rotates". Hence a solitary gold dot at 12 o’clock symbolizing the sun at high noon; the moving hands suggesting the movement of the earth.
Artist Nathan George Horwitt
Inspiration for the Museum Dial design
The original Museum Dial watch
 
When Horwitt’s dial design was selected for the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1960, it became the first watch dial ever awarded this distinction. The name “Museum Watch” derives from this recognition.
 
Today, Movado Museum Watches are in prominent museums around the world, and the legendary single dot dial acclaimed for purity of design unrivaled in the history of time-keeping and new explorations of it continue to distinguish a wide collection of singular Movado timepieces.