The permanent exhibition at the Architekturzentrum Wien provides insights into the most extensive and comprehensive collection on Austrian architecture of the 20th and 21st centuries. At the centre is the investigation of key exponents, including well-known and less well-known objects. Seven Hot Questions bring Cold Storage to life.

The Architekturzentrum Wien is the only museum in Austria devoted exclusively to architecture. As the Az W Collection has expanded over the last 17 years and consists of over 100 architects’ archives as well as extensive collections of individual projects, a large number of objects are being shown for the first time in the Permanent Exhibition: ‘Hot Questions — Cold Storage’. Selected models, drawings, furniture, fabrics, documents and films develop new threads in seven thematic episodes. Each episode is preceded by one of today’s burning issues, a Hot Question that brings Cold Storage to life.

The nation’s building activity with all of its cultural, social, economic and technical ramifications is made strikingly visible. The contents covered range from the special significance of Red Vienna to architectural pedagogical experiments in the wake of the 1968 movement or architectural revolts in Vorarlberg, to historical and current examples of environmental rethinking. The exhibition also engages with the ideological instrumentalisation of architecture and spatial planning and the active collaboration of architects in authoritarian systems, as well as their resistance. At the same time, the exhibition challenges deficits in the canon of Austrian architectural history, for instance from a perspective of gender equality. New players are featured, light is shed on previously little known sources and the key focus is on multiple perspectives instead of on a national historical narrative. This diversity is also reflected in the exhibition design. The sheer variety of the exponents and their display makes a visit to the exhibition a sensual and an atmospheric experience.

Concept: Angelika Fitz, Monika Platzer
Curator: Monika Platzer
Curatorial Assistance: Sonja Pisarik, Iris Ranzinger, Katrin Stingl
Production: Andreas Kurz
Finances und conversion: Karin Lux
Assistance: Barbara Kapsammer
Exhibition design: tracing spaces / Michael Hieslmair, Michael Zinganel ; seite zwei / Christoph Schörkhuber, Stefanie Wurnitsch

© Architekturzentrum Wien, Sammlung

© Museu de Arte Indígena, Curitiba

On the occasion of its reopening, mumok has invited the artist Jongsuk Yoon to conceive a new mural for the museum lobby. After photo-based installations by Cindy Sherman, Louise Lawler, and Jeff Wall, the most recent artist to create a mural was Siegfried Zaworka, who in his work dealt with the illusionist potentials of painting. Jongsuk Yoon now responds to the challenge of the monumental format with levitating, wholly anti-monumental and anti-heroic landscape pictures. Reduced means and the processuality of painting govern Yoon’s artistic practice, which she has developed in critical reflection of the paradigms of Western Modernism and East Asian traditions—particularly Expressionism, Abstract Expressionism, and Korean sansuhwa (Mountain and Water Paintings). Diaphanous layers of large-scale color patches, processual traces, and graphic ciphers condense to form panoramic “soul landscapes” (J. Yoon), in which “inner” and “outer” perspectives oscillate. 

Kumgangsan is the painterly convergence on a mountain region that Yoon herself has never set foot on: Since 1945, it has been the arbitrary dividing line and visible border between North and South Korea and, as such, is a symbol of an unresolved geopolitical conflict and its still traumatizing aftermath.

Jongsuk Yoon vor dem Wandbild Sun and Moon, Foto: Kalle Sanner © Nordiska Akvarellmuseet Courtesy the artist and Galerie nächst St. Stephan Rosemarie

The exhibition Mapping the 60s is based on the thought that substantial sociopolitical movements of the twenty-first century have their roots in the 1960s. Black Lives Matter and #MeToo, for example, have built on the anti-racist and feminist upheavals of yesteryear—as have current debates on war, mass media and mechanization, consumerism, and capitalism.
The developments of the 1960s in general and the events around 1968 in particular are not only paradigmatic in social and political terms, but also essential with regard to cultural policies. In 1962, the Museum des 20. Jahrhunderts was founded in Vienna, a precursor of mumok, whose collection focuses on Pop Art, Nouveau Réalisme, Fluxus, Viennese Actionism, performance art, Conceptual Art, and Minimal Art—artistic movements of the 1960s. Even when we ask ourselves how to address art history today and make it productive, we encounter discussions that go back to that decade.

Curated by Manuela Ammer, Marianne Dobner, Heike Eipeldauer, Naoko Kaltschmidt, Matthias Michalka, Franz Thalmair

Artists: Arman, Siah Armajani, Richard Artschwager, Evelyne Axell, Jo Baer, John Baldessari, Iain Baxter, Marlène Belilos / André Gazut, Joseph Beuys, Peter Blake, Mel Bochner, Alighiero Boetti, George Brecht, Peter Brüning, Jack Burnham, Michael Buthe, James Lee Byars, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Christo, Chryssa, Jef Cornelis, Robert Cumming, François Dallegret, Hanne Darboven, Walter De Maria, Jan Dibbets, Öyvind Fahlström, Mathilde Flögl, Sam Francis, Karl Gerstner, Alviani Getulio, John Giorno, Domenico Gnoli, Roland Goeschl, Robert Grosvenor, Hans Haacke, Raymond Hains, Sine Hansen, David Hockney, Michael Heizer, Richard Hamilton, Duane Hanson, Jann Haworth, Dick Higgins, Davi Det Hompson, Robert Huot, Robert Indiana, Alain Jacquet, Olga Jančić, Tess Jaray, Alfred Jensen, Jasper Johns, Asger Jorn, Allan Kaprow, Ellsworth Kelly, Corita Kent, Edward Kienholz, Konrad Klapheck, Kiki Kogelnik, Joseph Kosuth, Gary Kuehn, John Lennon, Les Levine, Sol LeWitt, Roy Lichtenstein, Richard Long, Lee Lozano, Mario Merz, Robert Morris, Ronald Nameth, Bruce Nauman, Claes Oldenburg, Jules Olitski, Yoko Ono, Dennis Oppenheim, Panamarenko, Pino Pascali, Walter Pichler, Larry Poons, Mel Ramos, Germaine Richier, Bridget Riley, Jean-Paul Riopelle, James Rosenquist, Teresa Rudowicz, Carolee Schneemann, Karl Schwanzer, George Segal, Richard Serra, Miriam Shapiro, Robert Smithson, K.R.H. Sonderborg, Keith Sonnier, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Paul Thek, Walasse Ting, Günther Uecker, Bram van Velde, Stan Vanderbeek, Frank Lincoln Viner, Franz Erhard Walther, Franz Erhard Walther / Arno Uth, Bernar Venet, Wolf Vostell, Andy Warhol, William Wegman, Lawrence Weiner, Tom Wesselmann, William T. Wiley

Sine Hansen On Top, 1967 130 cm x 120 cm x 2.8 cm Egg tempera on canvas mumok - Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Foto: Nora Meyer

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!

Kunsthalle Wien announces a new annual public art commission for its Museumsquartier building. Nora Turato (b. 1991, Zagreb) will inaugurate the Kunsthalle’s ‘Vitrine’ series with a new 62-metre mural which will remain on view for a year. The work will extend around the south-west wall of the building and be visible to passers-by as they traverse the outer arc of the Museumsquartier.

Turato’s work employs language as its primary material, playfully addressing the power structures at work in its spoken and written forms. Drawing upon a myriad of textual and typographic sources, she appropriates words and phrases, quoting advertising, mass media, SMS and email conversations in paintings on enamel panels and directly on walls. Fragments of text are also collaged to compose longer text-based works published as books or employed as scripts for videos and spoken word performances. T

urato’s new work, will use the length of the Kunsthalle’s Museumsquartier building to illustrate a scream. The artist’s typeface and its controlled application in this meticulously constructed wall painting is set in direct contrast to the text which mimics one of the most primal and uninhibited forms of expression. Unlike the so-called ‘primal scream’, ‘Aaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!’ refers not to a single, personal trauma but rather to the ‘ongoing incessant news cycle and state of the world with which we are all confronted and where this scream is the only reasonable form of not just release, but expression.’

Biography

Nora Turato (b. 1991, Zagreb) has held solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2022); Secession, Vienna (2021); Centre Pompidou, Paris; The International Centre of Graphic Arts, Ljubljana (both 2020); Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, Porto (2019) and Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein (2019). Her work has also been presented within significant international surveys including the Performa Biennial 2023; New York; PostCapital: Art and the Economics of the Digital Age at MUDAM Luxembourg and Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen (2021 and 2022 respectively); INFORMATION (Today), Kunsthalle Basel and Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo (2021 and 2022 respectively); Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art (2022) and the Belgrade Biennale (2021). Turato lives and works in Amsterdam.

Nora Turato, Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!, Kunsthalle Wien 2024, Courtesy the artist, photo: Iris Ranzinger

ERWIN WURM

A RETROSPECTIVE ON HIS 70TH BIRTHDAY

Erwin Wurm (b. 1954 Bruck/Mur) is one of today’s most successful and best-known international contemporary artists. For his 70th birthday, this presentation unfolds a firstever comprehensive survey of key works and important stations of his multifaceted oeuvre. Its arc extends from his beginnings in the 1980s to works shown here for the first time or created especially for the occasion. Sculptures, drawings and instructions, videos and photographs invite contemplating the paradoxes and absurdities of our world. In his artistic method, Erwin Wurm examines the concept of the sculptural, introducing it as a measure by which to gauge our contemporary world.

The boundaries between traditional concepts of sculpture, performance, photography or painting are called into question, just as the statics and movement within a work of art are redefined. Wurm overturns habitual perceptions of the reality that surrounds us and, with his artworks, opens up opportunities to raise new perspectives and questions: What happens if I disregard gravity, what if houses start melting away or are squashed by performative interventions? How do bodies and spaces behave when the absurd and paradoxical has room to exist in them? How can you, in the One Minute Sculptures, become part of a work of art for a brief moment, and how does that feel? As the artist himself explains, it is always about the concept of the sculptural in relation to the social. For example, a pickle may well be declared to be a self-portrait, or a lavish luxury convertible like the Fat Car as a symbol of greed, excess, and commodity fetishism in our society. On the other hand, the Narrow House conceptually reflects the narrowness of bourgeois thinking and action and the restrictiveness of social norms, whether through religion, convention, or faux pathos. Relating to this, the show for the first time presents a rural School, which stands for restrictive and now outdated ideas and is another symbol of oppressive and judgmental thought models.

Also in his recent works, Erwin Wurm stays committed to pursuing an innovative take on the sculptural parameters of hull, mass, skin, volume, and time: His new series, Substitutes, Skins, or Flat Sculptures, illustrate how the artist makes a point of rethinking and reshaping the world of existing things, taking us as viewers on a journey of discovery of open territories of thought and art.

100 objects, 100 designers, 25 years, 25 categories, 1 country: The MAK exhibition AUT NOW: 100 × Austrian Design for the 21st Century provides a varied overview of the diversity and innovation in Austrian product design in the new millennium on the basis of 100 design objects. Each of the 25 thematic categories—from A for “Alpine” to Z for “Zeitgeist”—contains four objects that are representative of the wide range of things designed and produced in Austria from the year 2000 to the present day. They are all particularly remarkable examples of Austrian product design—role models for the 21st century. AUT NOW extends an invitation to admire and appreciate the functional, conceptual, and poetic qualities of contemporary design and discover surprising details in familiar things.

“Ideally, contemporary product design should represent a dynamic and holistic approach that revolves around the needs of contemporary society and the environment,” according to MAK Curators Sebastian Hackenschmidt and Marlies Wirth, who developed the exhibition together with Georg Schnitzer and Peter Umgeher, founders of the design studio Vandasye. With their exhibition series Design Everyday held during VIENNA DESIGN WEEK since 2017, Vandasye has regularly turned its attention to Austrian product design, identifying ideas that propose ambitious and inspiring but also sensible solutions to improve everyday life.

The 25 categories define the route through the exhibition, while allowing an indepth response to the question of what characterizes product design today. “Good design” must take into account social challenges and innovative ways of organizing work, as well as new production techniques, distribution channels, and marketing opportunities. Formal, material, typological, and technological criteria play just as much of a role as ergonomics, social and environmental considerations, and the preservation of resources. The emotional content of objects, characterized by “maximum rizz”—wit, creativity, and charisma—is also essential.

Using these categories AUT NOW creates a “school of seeing” on key aspects of product development and the design process that mostly remain invisible to users. The full spectrum of contemporary products is represented in the exhibition—from furniture, domestic appliances, tools, and lighting to accessories and consumer electronics to design for personal care, health, work, mobility, and much more.

From A for “Alpine” to Z for “Zeitgeist”

The categories should be understood as general characteristics of the chosen objects. For instance, “Alpine” subsumes the canon of forms and types that is widespread in the Alps and unmistakable in a wide range of practical objects: a chair, avalanche equipment, and even a bong.

“Material Opportunities” explores the role played by the choice of material and the unexpected possibilities that can arise with the right material—such as unbreakable eyeglass lenses or an edible dog bowl. “Re-Typification” reveals the surprising designs of supposedly unchangeable everyday objects like a ladder or a coat hanger, whereas “Empowerment” contains projects that give their users agency, such as cutlery for children with an age-appropriate design. And the “Invisible” category presents material or functional qualities that remain unseen for the user, in objects like a water bottle or an acoustic panel. Unexpected juxtapositions can be found in almost every category— when it comes to using existing pre-products or intentional Lo-Tek, or when reviewing circular design strategies that make systemic change possible.

With the chosen objects, designers, and manufacturers, the curatorial team sought to represent a range of different approaches, generations, and branches. Self-initiated experiments are presented alongside the production lines of major companies, technological innovations alongside traditional handicraft, and serial products alongside limited editions or pieces that have long been discontinued. Design from the early 2000s is part of the exhibition, as are prototypes that are currently in development, products by established designers and manufacturers, as well as projects by the next generation of designers. Almost a quarter of the exhibits in the show are from the MAK’s own collection; most pieces on display are loans, with the intention to add some of them to the collection on the occasion of the exhibition.

ALPIN Gmundner Keramik, Bong, 2023 Bong Gmundner Keramik © MAK/Christian Mendez

What role does the Holy Scripture of Islam, the Qurʾān, play in the history of European thought? How has it been read and understood in Europe since the first translations in the Middle Ages? A special exhibition opening in autumn 2024 at the Weltmuseum Wien is dedicated to these questions. It will illustrate the diverse ways in which the Qurʾān has been experienced, read, and interpreted in Europe. With original historical artefacts, contemporary works of art, and media installations, the exhibition shows the significance of the Qurʾān in the lives of Europeans. It was developed in collaboration with the European Research Council (ERC) Synergy Grant Project “The European Qurʾān. Islamic Scripture in European Culture and Religion 1150–1850 (EuQu)”.

Marwan Shahin, One Thousand Years 2024 © Marwan Shahin

The exhibition Light Sound Senses explores light as a physical and natural and aesthetically usable phenomenon and aims to stimulate our diverse sensory perceptions. Visitors are invited to engage with multi-sensory works of art to heighten their own awareness of space, time, light, sound, taste and touch. Light is explored as an indicator of technological development and as a cultural construct with symbolic meaning. Through works from the Heidi Horten Collection as well as loans from TBA21 and site-specific and immersive installations – realized exclusively for the exhibition by invited artists – Light Sound Senses conveys a deeper understanding of the nature of light, sound and our five senses.

In the exhibition, which extends over two floors of the museum, visitors will get to know a pioneer of light art, László Moholy-Nagy, or encounter immersive light installations by Olafur Eliasson, Brigitte Kowanz and Siegrun Appelt. Appelt deals with the topic of light pollution and the scientific background of daylight research.

Tracey Emin and Joseph Kosuth use neon as an artistic and conceptual material. A room-filling sound installation by Austrian artist Bernhard Leitner encourages visitors to “see” sound; other artists use sound to achieve a stronger perception of their own bodies. Finally, works by Lena Henke and Ernesto Neto will stimulate the sense of smell and taste.

As a special feature of the exhibition, visitors are encouraged to interact with the works in a participatory way. One example of this is Carsten Nicolai’s work Bausatz noto, in which the visitors themselves act as sound artists: At a table with four record players, different colored vinyls with different timbres can be combined. Carsten Nicolai will create a light and sound installation exclusively for the exhibition.

The exhibition Light Sound Senses is to take a scientific-critical, humorous and artistic-aesthetic look at our sensory perceptions, to challenge them and play with them.

With works by:

Siegrun Appelt, John M Armleder, Cibelle Cavalli Bastos, Olafur Eliasson, Tracey Emin, Cerith Wyn Evans, Dan Flavin, Ceal Floyer, Peter Friedl, Gelatin, Helga Giffiths, Lena Henke, Carsten Höller, Krištof Kintera, Brigitte Kowanz, Joseph Kosuth,  Bernhard Leitner, Paul McCarthy, László Moholy-Nagy, Iván Navarro, Ernesto Neto, Carsten Nicolai, Tim Noble & Sue Webster, Tony Oursler, Finnbogi Petursson, Ugo Rondinone, Christine Schörkhuber, SUPERFLEX, Iv Toshain and Martin Walde.

Curated by:

Julia Hartmann

Olafur Eliasson Your uncertain shadow (colour), 2010 TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary Collection Foto: Jens Ziehe | Courtesy Studio Olafur

Swiss artist Ursula Biemann presents Becoming Earth, a series of video works exploring diverse life realities, ecological conditions, and natural relationships. Created during research trips to remote locations—from Greenland to the Colombian Amazon—her work operates at the intersection of art, science, and activism.

By blending documentary and artistic approaches, Biemann provides deeper insights into geopolitical and ecological contexts. Often collaborating with Indigenous artists, she highlights their knowledge, which does not seek to dominate nature but follows the principle of symbiosis.

Acoustic Ocean © Ursula Biemann

The subject of friendship is thoroughly existential and timeless, cutting to the bone of human existence. A theme that spans all historical periods and across all regions of the world. At the same time, the subject seems particularly relevant right now: In light of the threatening state of the world, the countless crises, conflicts, and increasing social divisions, Dom Museum Wien’s decision to dedicate this exhibition to a conciliatory interpersonal subject is all the more important.

“In times when polarization in politics, society, and social media as well as rampant egotism on Dom Museum Wien that placed connective elements, the give-and-take of me-and-you, and the dialogical principle front and center”, says museum director Johanna Schwanberg, who curated the exhibition together with co-curator Klaus Speidel. The exhibition title deliberately shies away from purely positive, often idealized connotations of the word “friendship” as the harmony of two souls, to signalize that this is no romanticized “sunshine-and-rainbows” presentation. “In the Spirit of Friendship” also addresses problematic aspects related to this type of relationship.

Friendship is a basic human need: relationships with others, spiritual closeness, and chosen family shape our lives. The exhibition deals with the universal meaning of friendship as part of human social interaction – on a personal or political level. Facets of friendship are explored via graphics, painting, sculpture, photography, video, and installation art. In addition to national and international loans and new commissioned works, the exhibition also offers insights into the collections of Dom Museum Wien.

Like in all preceding special exhibitions at Dom Museum Wien since its reopening in 2017, “In the Spirit of Friendship” doesn’t tell a chronological story but rather uses contrasts and juxtapositions of works from various periods of art history. The sculptures, paintings, drawings, photographs, and video installations span a historical arc from the Middle Ages to the present day. The selection comprises works from the historic holdings of the museum and the Otto Mauer Contemporary Collection as well as high-caliber loans from national and international collections, museums, abbeys, and galleries. The exhibition also incorporates several site-specific commissions and new acquisitions from numerous contemporary artists.

Founded in 1849, the company Joh. Backhausen & Söhne is one of the most traditional manufacturers of furniture and decorative fabrics in Vienna’s history.
From 1903 onwards, the company actively collaborated with contemporary artists, including prominent figures of the Viennese Modernism movement such as Josef Hoffmann, Koloman Moser, Otto Wagner, Joseph Maria Olbrich, Jutta Sika, Dagobert Peche, My Ullmann, and Otto Prutscher. Backhausen specialized in bringing their designs to life and became the main supplier for the Wiener Werkstätte, founded by Hoffmann, Moser, and Fritz Waerndorfer. This fruitful symbiosis culminated in projects such as the interiors of the Sanatorium Purkersdorf (1904/05), Villa Skywa-Primavesi (1913–1915), and Palais Stoclet in Brussels (1905–1911).

Through various thematic focal points, the exhibition will offer insight into the museum holdings of the Backhausen Archive, making this unique heritage accessible to a wider public.

Josef Hoffmann (Entwurf), 1910 © Backhausen-Archiv, Vermächtnis von Dr. Louise Kiesling, Dauerleihgabe im Leopold Museum | Foto: Backhausen-Archiv

The exhibition contrasts two houses that could not be more different. In his paintings, Jürgen Bauer reduces the idea of the house to a universal symbol: the pictogram of the house with a pitched roof, a square as the basic shape with a triangle above as the roof, formed from the same geometric figures over and over again.

Jürgen Bauer’s large-format paintings of houses, executed in acrylic on canvas, are contrasted with a series of small-format drawings of the Endless House of 1959 from Friedrich Kiesler’s estate.The Endless House is a true icon of 20th century visionary architecture and an early reference point for biomorphic architecture. Endless, not infinite, meant for Kiesler that “all ends meet” in his house, with the walls, ceilings and floors merging into one another and creating the illusion of an endlessly flowing spatial continuum.

The title of the exhibition ‘TWO HOUSES’ is an ironic allusion to a show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, in which the sculptor-architect Frederick Kiesler was compared to the engineer-architect Richard Buckminster Fuller.

Jürgen Bauer, House Repetition 3D-9, 2020, acrylic on canvas, 209 x 138 cm, Photo: Joanna Pianka © Bildrecht, Vienna 2022

This survey exhibition of the work of Liliane Lijn is the most comprehensive institutional solo presentation of the artist thus far. Born in New York in 1939 and based in London since 1966, Lijn has been working at the interface of visual art, literature, and science for more than six decades and has created an extensive oeuvre that includes sculptures, installations, collages, paintings, videos, and performances. Lijn’s multimedia practice has its origins in the kinetic art of the late 1950s as well as in her exploration of Surrealist ideas, ancient mythology, and eastern philosophy. Even her earliest works reveal an interest in unconventional artistic materials—an interest that continues to this day. In 1961, Lijn made first works from Perspex, in which she experiments with reflection, movement, and light. “Electric lights flash on and off plexiglass constructions, creating a tangle of transparent shadows called Echo Lights by the artist,” writes the American poet John Ashbery in 1963 about her exhibition in Paris. “Her Vibrographs are wheels revolving too fast for you to read the words printed on them, but perhaps they affect you unconsciously like subliminal advertising.”

Liliane Lijn Four Figures of Light, 1978 Installation Photo: Georg Petermichl / mumok © Bildrecht, Wien 2024

In the exhibition “THE SECOND PART OF THE NIGHT”, Georg Bernsteiner provides an insight into an enormous black and grey space that seems to come from the depths of space without any points of orientation. Shadows, lines and only vaguely defined objects appear like fragments of a memory of the Big Bang event. Supposedly figuratively legible forms float without direction on a velvety fleece of charcoal and graphite. The viewer’s eye simultaneously finds and searches in this infinite sea.

One is reminded of Hermann Nitsch, who was able to experience being intensely through drawing. ‘the essential creative act is founded in the timeless, in the beginning and the endless, in the infinite abyss, in infinity, spacelessness, emptiness. when one separates oneself from the past and the future and lives in the moment. when one experiences the moment of the creative event, one works from the timeless ground (the causelessness) of isness.’ (Hermann Nitsch, 2018)

The exhibition will be accompanied by a special limited edition leporello with works by Georg Bernsteiner and texts by Karl Schleinkofer.

Georg_Bernsteiner_VIII_2024

The special presentation Ansichtssache, which regularly showcases different works temporarily within the permanent exhibition of the Paintings Gallery at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, highlights in its 29th edition a masterful portrait of the nine-month-old Princess Marie-Therese of Bourbon-Sicily. This presentation invites visitors to explore the work of two celebrated court artists, Anton Raphael Mengs and Diego Velázquez, in greater depth.

Long kept in storage, the portrait of the infant princess has regained its extraordinary painterly quality thanks to a recent restoration. This restoration, along with the accompanying art historical analysis, sheds new light on Mengs: more than previously recognized, he drew inspiration from Diego Velázquez, his predecessor as court painter in Madrid. Additionally, the portrait’s strikingly vivid naturalism reflects a changing perception of childhood in the late 18th century.

Infanta Margarita of Spain in a Pink Dress Diego Velázquez (1599–1660) 1653/54 Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum © KHM-Museumsverband

The exhibition of the Kunsthalle Wien Preis 2024 presents the two prize-winners Rawan Almukhtar (Academy of Fine Arts Vienna) and Ida Kammerloch (University of Applied Arts Vienna).

The Kunsthalle Wien Preis seeks to support emerging artists living and working in Vienna and to promote discourse on contemporary art via an annual collaboration with the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and the University of Applied Arts Vienna. The selected artists each receive a € 3,000 prize in addition to a production budget towards the exhibition at Kunsthalle Wien Karlsplatz. The exhibition will be accompanied by a publication with texts by Alicja Melzacka and Rijin Sahakian.

Ida Kammerloch und Rawan Almukhtar, Kunsthalle Wien 2025, Foto: kunst-dokumentation.com

How did color get into photography? The exhibition True Colors – Color in Photography from 1849 to 1955 answers this question with outstanding works from the ALBERTINA Museum’s photo collection.

The desire for color in photography has dominated the world of photography from the very beginning. True Colors traces the development of color photography, from the first experimental techniques in the 19th century to generally applicable analog color photography.

Detail: Richard Neuhauss, Papagei, 1899, ALBERTINA, Vienna – Permanent loan of Höhere Graphische Bundes-Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt © Photo: ALBERTINA

Nana Mandl impressed the jury with her painterly fabric collages. Her works stand out for their significant connection between materiality, form, color, and contemporary themes. The exhibition now provides an overview of Nana Mandl’s body of work and presents new pieces.
Nana Mandl’s works offer a pause in the accelerated image machine of mass and social media, immersing viewers in individual moments captured by a cellphone camera. The artist, born in Graz and having studied in Berlin and Vienna, explores with the sensually tactile materials she uses the seemingly insignificant details that unconsciously appeal to us, draw our attention, and possibly contradict the actual intention of the photo. As both figurative and abstract elements, Mandl translates these into digital prints and drawings on textiles and canvases, in overpaintings, collages, and embroideries. Sometimes, it is just pixelated remnants of information from which she develops her motifs, transferring them from the digital to the three-dimensional material realm or into installation arrangements. The textiles used by Mandl come from her personal collection, were gifted to her, or found at flea markets; dyeing and bleaching extend the palette of the colors provided. In terms of her materials as well, Nana Mandl is committed to working with what already exists.
Anna-Catharina Gebbers

Nana Mandl, related issues, Art Site @ Gironcoli-Kristall, 2025, Foto: Rudi Froese

Psychoanalysis – which can hardly be spoken of in the singular – currently presents itself as an integrative discipline that is at the same time fragmented and at times standardising in schools: It is a lively and diverse field of research and clinical practice. Today, theoretical approaches are combined with current medical and neuroscientific approaches and psychoanalytic treatments are empirically researched. Psychoanalysis is also influenced by feminist criticism and by numerous discourses in the humanities and cultural studies, as well as by the various cultural contexts in which it is embedded as an international movement.

Exhibition view_Infinite Analysis, Sigmund Freud Museum, Photo, Wout Kichler

Recent technological studies provide new insights into Gustav Klimt’s working methods and artistic practice. Looking beneath the surface of the paint layers reveals the creation process of his paintings, occasionally uncovering surprising deviations between the preliminary drawing and the final execution of the artworks.

The exhibition also explores the question of how Klimt created his legendary golden paintings. How did he apply gold to the canvas? Macro photographs confirm that Klimt used only precious gold leaf for his works. Among the highlights is his iconic painting Judith—one of the first pieces in which the artist experimented with gold.

Gustav Klimt, Faculty Painting "Medicine", 1901, Recolorization based on historical photograph (2021)Belvedere, Vienna / Image by Google

Mika Rottenberg (*1976) is a New York-based artist who combines film, architectonic installations and interactive kinetic objects in her practice to illustrate the absurdity of the seemingly limitless escalating production of goods and commodities in our contemporary hypercapitalist world. From pearl farming and food production through to the mass manufacturing of plastic articles in China, Rottenberg humorously points to the urgent need to spare resources, to consume less and live in a more sustainable manner.

The exhibition is a cooperation with the Museum Tinguely in Basel and the Lehmbruck Museum in Duisburg.

© Mika Rottenberg, Lampshare, 2024 © Mika Rottenberg, Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth Photo: Pete Mauney

With Plastic Matters, KunstHausWien is proposing a change of perspective on dealing with plastic: from a waste product to a valuable material. Under the motto ‘Long live plastic’, workshops on plastic recycling illustrate the diverse processes of recycling and raise our awareness of the growing plastic problem. Plastic remains and must be thought of as a valuable resource in the cycle.

The exhibition shows the possibilities and potential of the material beyond industrial recycling processes. Because plastic concerns us all.

© Gravel Mischung, Photo Tom

‘Climate dignity means, on the one hand, that all people have the right to live in a world in which their health, freedom and livelihoods are not affected by climate change. In terms of climate justice, this applies in particular to those people, communities and countries that are or will be most affected by the impacts of climate change and are therefore particularly worthy of protection. ‘Climate Dignity also emphasises that the effects of man-made climate change and the associated loss of biodiversity not only threaten human dignity, but also endanger nature. The underlying concept of ‘Climate Dignity’ thus places the interdependence of humans and nature at the centre of more than human relationships: anyone who violates the dignity of nature also damages human dignity.

Ada Kobusiewicz, Javier Viana, Alberto Lomas Atacama Fashion, 2024, Installation im öffentlichen Raum, Paseo Marítimo, Algeciras, Spanien, Foto: Ada

Suburbia traces the history of an ideal of life that – starting in the US suburbs – conquered the world and is incessantly reproduced by popular media. At the same time, the exhibition analyzes the contradictions of this model and its social and ecological consequences such as land consumption, soil sealing, and vacancy. The big question is: What happens next?

The American dream can be described with an image that seems to have stood still in time: a large house with a yard, swimming pool, and two cars in the garage. A quiet, safe place for the nuclear family, close to nature and in people-friendly surroundings. Suburbia carries us off into this world of ideas and images that has been hugely promoted by politics, business, and the entertainment industry. The cultural history of the single-family home has its origins in the upscale American residential areas of the early nineteenth century. After the Second World War, the typology was massively developed and rolled out on a broad scale. The exhibition sheds light on the economic, political, and social context of this rapid expansion in the USA and beyond. It becomes clear that the model is based on social, ethnic, and gender-specific segregation and takes up an enormous amount of space.

The exhibition, curated by Philipp Engel for the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB), was adapted for the Az W and expanded to include an Austrian focus. Even in Austria, a large share of the population still wants to realize their own version of this dream on the outskirts of the city. According to a recent study by the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna (BOKU), the proportion of highly sprawling areas in Austria increased fivefold between 1975 and 2020 – particularly due to detached single-family homes, large-scale industrial parks, and shopping centers. As a result, traffic areas are destroying the landscape, the rapidly advancing sealing is threatening biodiversity and food security, town centers are becoming deserted, and in an aging society people are sliding into isolation. The image of half-abandoned, aging houses and residential estates characterizes many parts of the country. Instead of building new ones, the question arises as to how the existing stock of these approximately 1.5 million single-family homes can be made usable for the future. Successful examples of conversions, repurposing, densification, or new forms of living and working are intended to demonstrate the enormous potential and attractive alternatives.

Bill Owens: Cleo and James Pruden, 1972, Photo: Bill Owens Archive, Milano

The films of Ana Vaz activate and question cinema as an art of the (in)visible and instrument capable of dehumanising the human, expanding its connections with other-than-human or spectral forms of life.

In her exhibition at the Secession, Vaz will showcase her new film series Meteoro dedicated to drawing a critical anthropology of contemporary Europe through its landmarks and infrastructures in capitals of empire such as Paris and Porto. Through historical excavations, spectral hallucinations and anticipatory narratives, Vaz’s work reveals the negative imprint of an empire founded upon colonial violence, displacement, erasures, extraction and waste. Shot with high contrast black and white film, emphasising the fictive archaeology implicit in the images, Meteoro forges an archive of the present, guided by the hands and vision of a future traveler whose gaze is the very embodiment of the film and whose sightings are based upon performed contributions by Caribbean writer and performer Olivier Marboeuf, Tuareg researcher Maïa Tellit Hawad and Portuguese artist Isabel Carvalho.

Ana Vaz, Meteoro (Meteor), 2023–2024, film still, 16mm, transferred to 4K, Courtesy of the artist

The exhibition Moscow Material uses the architect’s own writings to provide the first in-depth look at the sketches, preliminary studies, (detailed) plans and visualizations of the designs for children’s furniture. In addition, numerous photographs of the architect from her time in Moscow as well as archive documents, letters and postcards provide a visual commentary on the construction of the USSR in the 1930s from her perspective. The initial design process for the children’s furniture took place during the period known as the “Great Terror”, making it particularly revealing in terms of political and social tensions. As both visual and verbal statements, these designs and ideas not only allow us to understand Schütte-Lihotzky’s private and public conception of design, but also to visualize the complex political and social demands of her position.

Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, Krippenmöbel, 1935–37, IN: 121/29, Kunstsammlung und Archiv, Universität für angewandte Kunst Wien / Bildrecht, Wien 2025

From March 2025, the Kunsthistorisches Museum will be showing the major exhibition Arcimboldo – Bassano – Bruegel.

The Times of Nature with masterpieces by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Jacopo and Leandro Bassano and numerous other 16th century artists. What was the relationship of people in the Renaissance to nature and time? How was this visualised in art? What role did the numerous fascinating seasonal and monthly cycles play, which were realised in ever new and varied formulations? These are the questions that the exhibition addresses. It sheds light on aspects of art history as well as the content of the paintings, their original purpose and the ideas of those who commissioned them.

Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1526–1593) Summer dated 1563 Kunsthistorisches Museum, Picture Gallery © KHM-Museumsverband