The "Historical Museum of the City of Vienna" ~ A Treasure In A City of Elegance

Written by Gustave Kindler Tuesday, 22 March 2011 00:07

The Wien Museum has an exceptional position in the rich landscape of the Viennese museums, blending art and history through its collection of inestimable art treasures. The Wien Museum (from 1887 to 2003 known as the "Historical Museum of the City of Vienna") was originally housed in the Vienna town hall. Plans for a new building on Karlsplatz were first drawn up before 1914, but it was not until the 1950s that a purpose-built structure was created for the museum. The building was designed by Oswald Haerdtl, a former associate of Josef Hoffmann and architect of the Austrian pavilion at world exhibitions of the 1930's. The museum opened on 23 April 1959 as the first newly built museum of the Second Republic, and remained the only such for decades . After the interior courtyard was roofed over in 2000, the museum gained a multi-functional event facility and a café. Alongside the permanent collection, special exhibitions are held at regular intervals in the Haerdtl building. Wien Museum is a general-purpose, metropolitan museum with a wide range of collections and exhibitions – including the history of the city, art, fashion and everyday culture, from the very early settlements to the present day. Because of its general approach and interdisciplinary potential, it occupies a unique position among Vienna’s museums. As well as the main building on Karlsplatz it encompasses many sites throughout the city, first and foremost the Hermesvilla in the Lainzer Tiergarten, the Römermuseum, the Clock Museum and the Musician Apartments (including the Beethoven, Haydn, Johann Strauss, Schubert and Mozart houses). Taking the city of Vienna as a model, it explores the general theme of social, cultural and urban change in comparison with other cities. The museum aims to address current topics and issues by looking at history and working with historical records. This is based on the conservation, research and permanent re-interpretation of the holdings and their significance in our lives today. Although Wien Museum is not primarily an art institution, it also deals with art and the conditions in which it is created. Artistic phenomena are placed in their social and cultural context and considered within a broader framework (“art plus” principle). However, the museum contains an impressive collection of art, in all forms. Visit the museum’s website at … www.wienmuseum.at

The Wien Museum possesses an art collection of remarkable quality, size and diversity including a significant painting and graphics collection of around 130,000 objects. The foundation for this was laid in 1894 when Prince Johannes II von und zu Liechtenstein made a gift of some high-quality pictures from the Biedermeier Period. Since then the museum has been collecting art in the areas of painting, graphic arts, sculpture, architecture and applied arts, objet d’art, installations, photography and video art. The time span represented in the collection stretches from the 14th century to the present day. Panel painting of the Middles Ages is represented, including an altar panel set by the Master of the Wiener Neustädter Altar, and European Renaissance painting with “Kaiserlicher Waldspaziergang vor dem Schloss Neugebäude (“Imperial Stroll through Forest outside Schloss Neugebäude”) by Lucas van Valkenborch. In the area of Austrian Baroque and Classicism, the collection contains exemplary works by key artists such as Paul Troger, Johann Michael Rottmayr and Heinrich Friedrich Füger. With main works by Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller, Peter Fendi and Friedrich von Amerling, the Wien Museum owns one of the most important collections of Viennese Biedermeier painting. In the graphic arts, the approximately 170 watercolours and drawings by Rudolf von Alt stand out. Historicism painting is represented among others by major works of Hans Makart, while works by Emil Jakob Schindler and Tina Blau represent the landscape depiction of Austrian Stimmungsrealismus (literally, Atmospheric Realism) around the end of the 19th century. Fin-de-siécle Art (“Vienna around 1900”), forms another focal point of the collection. Gustav Klimt’s portrait of Emilie Flöge (1902) as well as 400 of his hand-drawings belong to the highlights, as do significant works by Egon Schiele ( including “Junge Mutter” (Young Mother”) acquired in 2007), Carl Moll, Richard Gerstl and Max Kurzweil. In the area of artistic printed graphics, there is an outstanding collection of Wiener Werkstätte postcards and posters from the Secession. Among the most important works of the Inter-War Period are Oskar Kokoschka’s “Wien vom Wilhelminenberg” (“Vienna from the Wilhelminen Mountain”, 1931) and Herbert Boeckl’s “Anatomie” (“Anatomy”, 1931). One highlight from the area of post-1945 Art is Rudolf Hausner’s “Arche des Odysseus” (“The Ark of Ulysses”, 1948-1956), one of the main works of the Viennese School of Phantastischer Realismus (literally, Fantasy Realism). Examples of acquisitions in recent years are Xenia Hausner’s portrait of Elfriede Jelinek (“Oh Wildnis“) and Gerwald Rockenschaub‘s screen print on alucore, which shows St. Stephen’s Cathedral (1999). The painting and graphics collection of the Wien Museum also houses large stocks of lesser known artists and so offers a broad overview of visual culture since the 14th century.

The collection is continuously expanded with representative works of contemporary art. The Plastic Arts and Sculpture Collection of the Wien Museum comprises around 2,900 objects. Among the oldest art objects in the Wien Museum are the numerous original statues from St. Stephen’s Cathedral dating from the 14th century, which originate from gifts made by the Prince Archbishop’s Ordinariate. The core items of the Plastics Arts and Sculpture Collection date from the so-called Ringstrasse Epoch, sculptures commissioned for municipal construction works. Important sculptors such as Johannes Benk, Josef Gasser, Karl Kundmann and Viktor Tilgner were commissioned to carry out architectural sculptures. Of the 19th century sculptors, Kaspar Zumbusch, Karl Kundmann, and Viktor Tilgner are notably represented in the collection. In the area of 20th century Viennese sculpture, the works of Anton Hanak and his most famous apprentice Fritz Wotruba stand out. The Wien Museum possesses two figural works by this pioneer of modern sculpture in Austria and also a portrait bust of Robert Musil. Notions of sculpture in contemporary art are broadened by a complex of works by Hans Schabus acquired by the museum in 2004. Titled “A Further Attempt at a Room for ‘Western’”, this complex alludes to the sailing boat “forlorn” and the “Western” film genre among other references. The museums also contains significant collections of architectural documents and models, objects from Viennese arts and crafts, porcelain and ceramincs, furniture, photography and video artworks, including works by Leopold Kessler like “Reparatur” (“Repair”) and “Freisprechanlage“(“Intercom”) as well as works of Hans Schabus. The Wien Museum’s Archaeological collection comprises some 150,000 objects. These have been recovered over an extended period of time beginning with the city’s reconstruction in the late 19th century.

Three temporary exhibitions are currently on display at the Wien Museum. Until April 3rd 2011, “Window Shopping: A Photographic History of the Shop Window” takes a fascinating photographic journey through the history of shop window displays, from mere displays of the goods available inside, to brightly lit, constantly changing works of art, intended to seduce customers into the stores. Besides works by August Stauda, Emil Mayer, Martin Gerlach jun., Franz Hubmann, Barbara Pflaum, Lucca Chmel, Gerhard Trumler, Trude Lukacsek or Didi Sattmann, documents relating to historical window displays at Viennese department stores and shops such as Herzmansky, Gerngross or Palmers are on show. “Trude Fleischmann: A Self-Assured Eye”, until 29th May 2011, presents a comprehensive exhibition of the photographer’s work, focusing on her Vienna period from 1920 to 1938. A photographer of theatre stars, dancers and intellectuals, an artist whose portraits of contemporaries like Karl Kraus, Adolf Loos or Albert Einstein have become famous, and whose motion studies of nude dancers in the 1920s caused quite a sensation, Trude Fleischmann (1895–1900) without any doubt ranks among the greats of 20th century female photography. “Building St Stephen's: The Original Plans from the Middle Ages” until 21st August 2011 provides a rare chance to see the plans drawn up and used by architects during the 300 years that Vienna’s cathedral took to build. No other Gothic cathedral building in Europe possesses a comparable number of plan outlines, carried out on parchment and paper, which have survived the centuries. The collection comprises 294 plan outlines, of which the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna owns 285, and the Wien Museum a further 9. These detailed drawings, used by the Cathedral master builders and stone masons, have been on the UNESCO list of world-heritage documents since 2005. These make up the core of the exhibition, including for example a fifteen-foot, highly detailed outline of the never-completed North Tower from the Wien Museum Collection. There is also a “discovery path” through the permanent exhibition stopping at numerous exhibits that relate to St. Stephen’s Cathedral. Welcome to Vienna and its museum!