Exhibitions

Within the format “Viewing the Collection & An Insert by…”, installations and groups of works are presented alongside highlights from the Painting Gallery’s collection. These inserts are conceived as interventions by contemporary artists within the temporarily arranged display of the collection. The insert by the Belgian artist Ana Torfs constitutes the third intervention in this series.
 

Under the title The Day You Were Thinking About the Sibyl While You Were Picking Autumn Leaves, Torfs presents for the first time a new cycle of 28 Jacquard tapestries. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the artist read Virgil’s Aeneid and, while walking and collecting autumn leaves, thought of the Sibyl of Cumae, who wrote her prophecies on leaves. Torfs pressed the collected foliage between the pages of international daily newspapers, photographed these arrangements, and later had them woven as large-scale tapestries, complemented by personal, verse-like textual fragments.
 

The result is a fragmentary tableau reflecting both the state of the contemporary world and the thoughts of an individual. The lyrical textile fabric lends a sense of permanence to the fleeting events of everyday life while pointing to a historically significant present whose future consequences remain uncertain. Like the Sibyl’s leaves scattered by the wind, today’s news and interpretations increasingly appear enigmatic.

Ausstellungsansicht © Kunstsammlungen der Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien, Foto: Iris Ranzinger

Work shapes the greater part of human life. It structures everyday routines, time, and social relationships, while also determining material security and social participation. In a present marked by economic crises, global inequality, and profound transformations of the working world, engagement with the topic of work has gained new urgency. Platform labor, automation, artificial intelligence, migration, the care crisis, and social precarity are challenging established ideas and certainties.
 
The exhibition Alles in Arbeit at the Dom Museum Wien creates a space in which diverse perspectives and artistic approaches come together. At its core is the human struggle with wage labor—its necessity, meaning, burden, and potential for shaping life. At the same time, the works on view question and expand conventional definitions of work by addressing invisible, unpaid, or marginalized forms of labor, including care and domestic work, artistic production, protest, and procrastination.

See Red Women’s Workshop, A Woman’s Work Is Never Done, 1974. © See Red Women’s Workshop.

“The Case Freud. Documents of Injustice” sheds light on the final months of the Freud family in Nazi Vienna and recounts the events in the years that followed. The systematic dispossession of Sigmund Freud and his brother Alexander Freud is reconstructed in detail. New findings deepen our understanding of the fate and murder of their four sisters—Rosa Freud, Maria Freud, Adolfine Freud, and Pauline Freud—by the Nazi regime.

Unpublished (Perpetrator) Documents
The Sigmund Freud Museum recently succeeded in acquiring previously unknown documents. They come from the estate of the Nazi-appointed “provisional administrator” of the International Psychoanalytic Publishing House, which was owned by Sigmund and Anna Freud.
These documents now form the central element of the exhibition. Viewed together with hundreds of original files, business letters, and lists from the financial administrator responsible for
 

Alexander Freud and the four sisters, they shed light on the legal and financial mechanisms behind the Nazi crimes.
The records also reveal another act of perfidy: the founder of psychoanalysis was able to ship the entire furnishings of his home at Berggasse 19—including his antiquities collection—to London. As a result, his emigration appeared privileged in the eyes of the international public. Behind the scenes, however, the Nazis seized nearly all of his financial resources through the intermediary of the International Psychoanalytic Publishing House; in doing so, his son Martin Freud, the publishing house’s managing director, was placed under massive pressure.
Alexander Freud was the owner of the Allgemeiner Tarif‑Anzeiger. As a freight expert he was internationally recognized and had achieved greater wealth than his more famous brother. He was able to save his life and that of his wife only by surrendering all of his possessions. Penniless, they left Vienna, fled via Zurich to London, and eventually continued on to Canada.
Four of Freud’s five sisters were living in Vienna in 1938—no escape could be arranged for them. They were forced out of their homes, placed in a “collective apartment,” robbed, deported, and murdered in 1942.

Plakat. Der Fall Freud. Dokumente des Unrechts. Simund Freud Museum

With the exhibition Animalia. Of Animals and Humans, the Heidi Horten Collection explores the complex relationship between humans and animals. The term Animalia, borrowed from biology, serves as a guiding concept for a critical examination of how humans treat animals, a relationship reflected in more than 100 artworks from the 20th and 21st centuries.
 
Derived from anima, the Latin word for breath or soul, the term Animalia, coined by the naturalist Carl von Linné (1707–1778), encompasses both humans and animals alike. In contrast to this model of equality, the way humans treat animals is marked by a clear hierarchy.
 
As the supposed “pinnacle of evolution,” as a rational being that rises above the animal world, humans assign animals ambivalent roles. Artistic representations that make these different attributions visible reveal much about humans themselves; they allow conclusions to be drawn about human self-understanding and methods of projection. Thus, humans are already present in every image of an animal—even when they are not part of the depiction.

Lena Henke, UR Mutter, 2019 Heidi Horten Collection, © die Künstlerin

KAWS. Art & Comix explores the interplay between comics, comic strips, cartoons, and fine art since the second half of the twentieth century. The exhibition at the Albertina Modern juxtaposes KAWS with selected contemporary artists and highlights the artistic autonomy of his figures that combine elements of fine art, pop culture, as well as commercial and public art. The emotional power of KAWS’s characters contributes significantly to their international success.

The exhibition traces a form of art whose motivation is directly rooted in the aesthetics of comics: The graphic impulse, the immediacy of drawing on paper, the engagement with everyday life, the emotionality of fictional characters, and storytelling all play a central role. Comics exist in many cultures as an accessible way of narration in pictures. With a universal and readily legible visual language, comics engage audiences across generations and social class.

Private collection © KAWS Photo: Courtesy KAWS Studio

Seeds are the very foundation of our life. They provide us with the nutrients and raw materials we need;
they embody biological diversity;
they preserve and pass on regional knowledge and cultural heritage; and they stand for hope, change, and renewal.
The group exhibition explores the multilayered meanings of seeds as a mirror of our relationship to the earth and one another.

For the fourteen international artists of the exhibition, the seed is the starting point for their investigations from ecological, cultural, and symbolic perspectives. Originating from diverse geographical and cultural contexts, the works collected here consider migration and colonialism, indigenous knowledge and biodiversity, agriculture and food sovereignty, as well as resistance, self-empowerment, cooperative praxis based on solidarity, and regenerative futures.

Artists:
Ackroyd & Harvey, Maria Thereza Alves,
Alexandra Baumgartner, Tue Greenfort,
Kapwani Kiwanga, Dominique Koch,
Jumana Manna, Christian Kosmas Mayer,
Marzia Migliora, Lucía Pizzani, Michaela Putz,
Cecilia Vicuña, Munem Wasif

Curated by Sophie Haslinger

Michaela Putz, Postfactual Seeds, 2026 Courtesy of the artist © Michaela Putz

The exhibition Global – Neutral examines the era of global political upheaval between 1955 and 1989, when many countries achieved independence from colonial occupiers and international cooperation was shaped by Cold War tensions. It pieces together clues about the Austrian architects who had commissions in African and Asian countries.

In the second half of the twentieth century, architecture increasingly became part of the global context. Political upheavals and new alliances changed the world—many newly founded states in Asia and Africa became important venues for international architecture and urban development projects. Architecture and urban planning also reflected political attitudes in a newly emerging world order. Austrian architects operated from a unique position in this context: due to their country’s political neutrality, they did not act as representatives of an ideological bloc, but as seemingly independent partners without a colonial past. Yet their projects—in countries such as Burkina Faso, India, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Nepal, and Tanzania—were also interwoven with political, economic, and cultural interests: they were part of development programs, served as symbols of diplomatic rapprochement, and were venues for transnational cooperation.

Plans, photographs and models from the Az W’s extensive collection shed light on these multi-faceted connections. We’re presenting projects—some were built, while others remained on paper—by about 25 Austrian architects, including, for example, Carl Auböck, Djamshid Farassat, Eugen Gross, Eva Mang-Frimmel & Karl Mang, Norbert Heltschl, Hans Hollein, Helene Koller-Buchwieser, Shahrzad Seradj-Kraupp, Hannes Lintl, Carl Pruscha, Roland Rainer, and Anton Schweighofer. By placing the projects within the broader context of the political, cultural, and globalized force fields in play, the exhibition Global – Neutral opens up new perspectives on Austrian architecture.

Walter Hildebrand, Eckhard Schulze-Fielitz, Gunter Wratzfeld: „Habitainer“ Unterkünfte für Ingenieure der Firma Hochtief, Skikda, Algerien 1970 © Architekturzentrum Wien, Sammlung, Foto: Gunter Wratzfeld

My Story opens with two previously unseen portraits of women, offering direct and surprising insights into current research on Roman portraits.

The Collection of Greek and Roman Antiquities at the Kunsthistorisches Museum houses around 250 Roman marble portraits. Their particular impact lies, to this day,
in the immediacy with which they bring people from a distant past to life.
In this special exhibition, the ancient sculptures themselves take the floor, telling us about their appearance and the central role played by an often underestimated detail: their hairstyle.
This allows us to explore key questions in portrait research – from dating to identity.

Julia Mamaea Spätseverisch, 222–235 n. Chr.; Kunsthistorisches Museum, Wien, Antikensammlung © KHM-Museumsverband

Richard Prince (*1949) is one of the best-known contemporary representatives of Appropriation Art. Since the 1970s, the New York–based artist has explored the visual worlds of everyday American culture.

By appropriating existing images from advertising, subcultures, and mass culture, and by altering and recontextualizing them, Prince examines the myths and fictions that underlie mass-media imagery. Closely connected to this are questions of authorship, originality, and the mechanisms of media representation.

Courtesy of Richard Prince Studio © Richard Prince

The Oesterreichische Nationalbank (OeNB), the Central Bank of the Republic of Austria, made a significant financial contribution to the Leopold Museum-Privatstiftung in 1994, thus laying the groundwork for the foundation and success story of the Leopold Museum. The exhibition “Premiere!” honors the long-standing ties between the two institutions, showcasing the impressive diversity of the OeNB’s art collection for the first time in a comprehensive presentation.

Since the late 1980s, the OeNB has been collecting Austrian painting and sculpture from 1918 to the present, with special emphases on the art of the interwar period – especially New Objectivity and post-Expressionism – as well as on works in the area of geometrical and gestural abstraction after 1945.

The presentation offers a cross-section of the main tendencies in Austrian art: It features works by famous exponents of New Objectivity, including Rudolf Wacker and Franz Sedlacek, as well as independent positions from art of the interwar period, as pursued by Greta Freist and Max Oppenheimer. In terms of contemporary art after 1945, the exhibition reveals interesting parallels between different generations of artists, for instance between Maria Lassnig and Tobias Pils, as well as Svenja Deininger and Ernst Caramelle. It further highlights the various approaches to abstraction in painting, encountered in the works of artists from Martha Jungwirth to Herbert Brandl. Sculptural works, for instance by Josef Pillhofer, Julia Haugeneder or Constantin Luser, make up another important part of the collection.

MAX OPPENHEIMER, Die Schachpartie, 1925/30 © Oesterreichische Nationalbank | Foto: Sammlung Oesterreichische Nationalbank

“Tell these people who I am!”

—surely nothing captures the high artistic aspirations of the famous designer Vally Wieselthier (1895−1945) as concisely as her own words. Radically expressive, confident, and far ahead of her time, she broke the mold of functional pottery.
She considered herself a sculptor and created masonry heaters, fountains, wall friezes, as well as impressive sculptures, but she was also a successful textile artist and graphic designer.
With its first comprehensive retrospective on the artist entitled VALLY WIESELTHIER: Ceramic Sculptor, the MAK is turning the spotlight on her career in Europe and the United States and demonstrating her lasting and ongoing impact on Austrian ceramic art on the basis of 160 select objects.

The exhibition was inspired by the partial bequest of her estate by her family in the US.

Vally Wieselthier, Entwurf für eine Kaminverkleidung, um 1927 Bleistift, Gouache auf Papier © MAK

The artist Helga Philipp (1939–2002) is regarded as a a preeminent representative of Austrian concrete art and op-art. As early as the 1960s, she developed a precise, conceptually grounded visual language that placed perception and motion at the center of her artistic output. Her oeuvre, situated between the poles of visual experience, geometric abstraction, and a kinetic formal language, features experimentation with mathematical principles, serial structures, and interactivity.

This exhibition will present around 50 of the artist’s most important works from several decades, showing the great variety of her output in various genres such as painting, drawing, printed graphics, and object art.

Helga Philipp Ohne Titel (Kinetisches Objekt), 1966–1968 115 × 115 cm, Lack, Glas, Holz Privatsammlung © Nachlass Helga Philipp Foto: Nachlass Helga Philipp

Over a period of six months, Kunsthalle Wien will present across all of its exhibition spaces the largest survey of Vienna’s contemporary art scene that the institution has organized in more than a decade. Sculptures, installations, drawings, paintings, photographs, performances, and videos by more than fifty artists will be brought together in an exhibition that places a particular focus on newly commissioned works and pieces that have not previously been shown in Vienna.

The title of the exhibition derives from a survey first presented at Kunsthalle Wien in 2000 and revisits a format that offers insight into the dynamic, transnational, and culturally diverse artistic communities living and working in Vienna today. The exhibition will be accompanied by a year-long public program.

Complementing the exhibition, a new publication will be released featuring newly commissioned texts on all participating artists as well as transcripts of conversations between curators, artists, and critics living and working in Vienna, published in both German and English.

Judith Eisler, Hanna, 2019

The Theseus Temple will once again host an exhibition by the Weltmuseum Wien in 2026 as part of the WMW Contemporary series. Kiteezi marks the first time an installation by Ugandan artist Nabukenya Allen (artist name: Njola), founder of the Njola Impressions studio, will be on view in Austria.

Drawing on the aftermath of an environmental tragedy, Nabukenya Allen transforms loss into renewal: Her installation *Kiteezi*, adapted for the Theseus Temple and named after the main waste disposal site in Kampala, the capital of Uganda, addresses the social and ecological consequences of urban waste and focuses on the people who live and work in the vicinity of the landfill.

The work links a real-life catastrophe to issues that also affect Europe: waste, consumption, and global responsibility.

Njola Impressions Kiteezi Collection © Giulio Molfese

For years now, he has been one of the most well-known comedy legends in the German-speaking world: Otto Waalkes. Generations have laughed about his wordplay and parodies. His films, television appearances, songs, and verses have become an integral part of pop culture.

Despite his stardom, his artistic ambitions are lesser known. As a painter, he has made his iconic character, the Ottifant, roam through the history of art. During his time in an artists’ housing co-op with Udo Lindenberg, Marius Müller-Westernhagen, and others, OTTO studied at the University of Fine Arts in Hamburg.

The ALBERTINA Museum and its collection have always fascinated him.

To mark the 250th anniversary of its founding, the ALBERTINA Museum invited OTTO to reinterpret and comment on selected masterpieces from its Graphic Art Collection.

Through an intervention in the Habsburg State Rooms, Otto Waalkes encounters renowned masterpieces from the ALBERTINA, entering into a dialogue of the extra-Frisian kind.

Parodic appropriation as the sincerest form of homage.

Otto Waalkes Der ostfriesische Götterbote, 2025, Acryl auf Hartfaserplatte, Teegrund © 2026 Otto Waalkes

Onyeka Igwe’s practice excavates the unstable ground of the colonial archive, approaching it not as a fixed repository of knowledge but as a site of friction, opacity, and unresolved violence. Her films and installations confront the archive by attending to what is missing, suppressed, or rendered inaudible.
Igwe reactivates materials often treated as inert – celluloid reels, visual records of past bureaucracies, abandoned and forgotten spaces.
What emerges is not a reconstruction of history but an attunement to its dissonances: a historiography felt through the body, where colonial violence,
far from being in the past, persists as a condition of the present.

In the First Floor Gallery, two video works – both part of
No Archive Can Restore this Chorus of (Diasporic) Shame (2024/26) – unfold in close relation to one another.
Presented on the window front, the moving image blends with the institution’s architecture and urban surroundings, situating its sonic and visual field within the specific conditions of its display.
The film traces the afterlives of British colonialism in Nigeria through the abandoned site of the former Nigerian Film Unit in Lagos – once a key outpost of the Colonial Film Unit’s propaganda apparatus. Today, the building stands in disrepair. The images once housed there are difficult to access – not only due to their material degradation, but also because of a broader reluctance to confront what they contain.

Onyeka Igwe, anomalies and cobwebs (2026), Ausstellungsansicht No Archive Can Restore this Chorus of (Diasporic) Shame, Secession 2026. Foto: Sophie Pölzl

Terminal Piece is mumok’s first exhibition under the new directorship of Fatima Hellberg — and at the same time a vision for the museum’s future. Spanning multiple sections across all floors,
it brings together works from the collection with new acquisitions and loans.

The starting point is Terminal Piece (1972)
by Kate Millett — artist, activist, author — the first acquisition under Hellberg’s leadership.
Millett’s work questions the viewer’s position and makes it the theme of the entire exhibition itinerary.

Curated by Fatima Hellberg and Lukas Flygare

Kate Millett Terminal Piece, 1972 mumok – Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien

Hypnotic motifs, pulsating shapes, and flickering patterns: this exhibition will juxtapose works by two “grand masters” of optical illusion, placing them in a multifaceted dialogue.

Victor Vasarely (1906–1997) sought to put our sense of vision to the test in many of his works, above all from the 1950s onward. His complex oeuvre is more current than ever today, with the powerful colors of his strict geometric patterns and the strong contrasts of his black-and-white paintings having persisted as elements of aesthetic creativity. The portrayal of motion in art was likewise a central topic of investigation for the Austrian artist Marc Adrian (1930–2008), whom Peter Weibel dubbed the “father of media art”.

ALBERTINA, Wien – The ESSL Collection © Bildrecht, Wien 2025

The STRABAG ART Award 2026 ceremony and the opening of the winners’ exhibition will take place on June 25, 2026.

Shortlisted Artists 2026:
PAULINA EMILIA AUMAYR
DANIEL HÖLZL
TASSILO LANTERMANN
TANYA PIONIKER
MARKO ŠAJN

The STRABAG ART Award is awarded as a promotional prize for young art in the fields of painting and drawing. From 2024–2026, the prize is awarded to artists in Germany, Slovenia and Austria.
At the beginning of the year, 738 artists applied, 50 positions prevailed in the Online-Jury.
On April 23, the Jury Meeting of the international expert jury took place in front of the original works. The submitted works of the five prize winners will be presented in the exhibition.

STRABAGart Finalist:innen, Foto: Nicole Viktorik

Twenty-five years after its opening,
the MuseumsQuartier looks back on the tumultuous history of one of the world’s largest cultural complexes.
Through drawings, plans, models, and artistic works, the exhibition traces a broad arc from the Baroque Hofmarstall (Imperial Stables) and the Messepalast (Trade Fair Palace) to the planning and construction of the MQ.

The fundamental idea remains:
to conceive of the MQ not as a static monument,
but as a living place that changes and responds to new challenges.
At the same time, the exhibition opens up perspectives for the future of this indispensable urban space.

Curated by Andreas Nierhaus

Draufsicht Scan aus Entwurfsmappe © Ortner & Ortner

In the summer of 2026, Belvedere 21 will present a large-scale exhibition throughout its ground and upper-floor galleries, showcasing works acquired for the Belvedere collection over the past ten years. In keeping with the profile of the collection, artworks from all periods will be brought together in a spatial installation by Heimo Zobernig—a kind of Stellprobe, a staging rehearsal of sorts.

Collecting lies at the heart of the museum’s mission. The expansion of its holdings—from medieval to contemporary art—follows the collection’s profile while addressing gaps in art history. A key focus has been, and remains, the strengthening of women artists and other historically underrepresented positions within the collection.

This exhibition reflects these priorities and features historical and contemporary works in a display conceived specifically for the occasion by artist Heimo Zobernig.

Nancy Spero, Sheela and Wilma, 1985 (Detail) Belvedere, Wien, Ankauf von der Galerie Lelong, New York Foto: Johannes Stoll / Belvedere, Wien © Bildrecht, Wien 2026

Digital surveillance, AI, and visual manipulation—Miao Ying reveals the darker sides of our connected world. Her solo exhibition at the Belvedere 21 offers a nuanced exploration of the aesthetics of digital control. Through installations, painting, and video, the artist examines global media cultures, mechanisms of censorship, and the power of generative technologies.

In her latest works, Ying creates AI-generated digital images using generative neural networks programmed with predefined parameters. She then translates these digital compositions into analog, painterly formats. This fusion of new technologies and traditional image-making calls into question our perceptions of reality and control.

© Miao Ying, photo: Markus Wörgötter © Bildrecht Vienna, Courtesy Miao Ying and Galerie nächst St. Stephan Rosemarie Schwarzwälder Vienna

Since the Italian Renaissance, the increasingly prominent question of a hierarchy of the arts, one that fueled, among other things, the rivalry between painting and sculpture, came to an end with the advent of modernism. In this exhibition, where the work of a sculptor encounters that of a painter, the intention is not to revive the paragone debate in art-theoretical terms, but rather to stage a dialogue between two artistic personalities who, despite their differences in historical, spatial, and cultural contexts, reveal striking analogies both in formal aesthetics and in the phenomenology of their work. This juxtaposition of Herbert Boeckl (1894–1966) and Hans Josephsohn (1920–2012), who never met during their lifetimes, nevertheless highlights fundamental parallels in their understanding of corporeality, materiality, and the process of form-finding.

Neither Boeckl nor Josephsohn, and this despite the growing prominence of abstract art since the 1950s, pursued a path into abstraction. They remained committed to figuration and, in particular, to the human figure as a bearer of artistic expression. Although both engaged in a pronounced process of abstraction in their depictions of the human body, often dispensing with anatomical detail, they sought to distill the essential through radical simplification and intense concentration. As a result, many of their figures appear de-individualized and stylized, presenting a universal form of the human. Despite, and perhaps because of, this reduction, which transforms the “portrayed” into pure form, their figures possess a powerful expressive force. This specific auratic presence is evoked through expressive simplicity, formal reduction, and not least an impressive material immediacy. Their shared interest in the physicality of materials provides yet another point of correspondence: while Boeckl applies paint thickly, almost sculpturally or in relief-like layers, Josephsohn works in a comparably additive manner in his plaster modeling and the castings derived from it.

HERBERT BOECKL, Gruppe am Waldrand, 1920 © Leopold Museum, Wien | Foto: Leopold Museum, Wien © Herbert Boeckl-Nachlass, Wien

This major show undertakes an exciting juxtaposition of the 20th century’s two most important figurative painters: Pablo Picasso and Francis Bacon.

Both of these seminal artists placed human existence at the core of their pictorial worlds. The subject they shared was the human figure – pulled apart, thrown back together, and reinvented with an unprecedented savagery. In their distorted portrayals, they elucidated pain, desire, and vulnerability, holding up a merciless mirror to the modern soul. To both, themes such as crucifixions, screams, bullfights, nudes, and the Tears of Eros revealed the drama of life itself. Although Picasso for his part was never influenced by Bacon, he followed his career very closely.

Francis Bacon, Three Studies of Isabel Rawsthorne, 1967 Neue Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin © The Estate of Francis Bacon / All rights reserved / Bildrecht, Vienna und DACS, London 2026

In autumn 2026 the Belvedere is paying tribute to the work of artist Erika Giovanna Klien (1900 –1957) in an extensive solo exhibition. As the foremost exponent of Viennese Kineticism, she drew and painted fascinating depictions of quivering birds in flight, dancing bodies, and rotating machines. Her compositions were based on the observation, analysis, and arrangement of complex movements, whether these were natural or technical in origin. It was especially after moving to New York in 1929 that Klien emerged as an astute observer of technical progress and modern city life with its ever-faster pace.

An exhibition organized by the Belvedere, Vienna, in collaboration with the collection and archive of the University of Applied Arts Vienna, and the dem Istituto Italiano di Studi Germanici, Rom.

Curated by Verena Gamper

Co-curator: Veronica Liotti

Assistant Curator: Johanna Hofer

Erika Giovanna Klien, Kinetische Figur, 1927 © Sammlung Leitner Wien

The Heidi Horten Collection presents Elisabeth von Samsonow (*1956) in a comprehensive solo exhibition — the first to showcase her work in such depth and breadth. Sculptures, paintings, drawings, films, and a site-specific installation trace a journey from her early works to her most recent creations.

Building on this comprehensive presentation, Samsonow’s practice combines performative thinking with formal diversity:

The earth as a source of energy and a space of memory,
the Gaia myth as a narrative horizon,
and wooden sculptures made of thousand-year-old linden wood
—the work moves confidently between art,
philosophy, and anthropology.

In addition to Samsonow’s works, pieces by Egon Schiele and German Expressionists from the collection enter into a complementary dialogue with her artistic position,
expanding the exhibition’s context.

Curated by: Rolf H. Johannsen and Hana O. O. Haas

Momus, 2011, Elisabeth von Samsonow, Foto: Sophie Thun

Flower fields, enchanted forests and waterfalls shrouded in mystery seem born of a wild feverish dream: enormous blossoms rear up like ancient trees toward the sky, plants mutate into something strangely familiar yet foreign, blazing sunsets shimmer in the water’s reflection, celestial bodies glow on the horizon, bathing the landscape in an otherworldly, surreal light.

The paintings of Shara Hughes (*1981 in Atlanta, Georgia) are a journey through twists and turns – the jungle of an exuberant inner world. These symbolically charged works are in part a homage to Georgia O’Keeffe, yet their expressive use of colour owes above all to Fauvist conceptions of landscape and the Expressionism of the modern era.

Shara Hughes Weighted Blankets, 2022, The George Economou Collection © Shara Hughes Photo: JSP Art Photography

On the occasion of its 250th anniversary, the ALBERTINA presents an exhibition dedicated for the first time to women artists in its collection, thereby reframing established art historical narratives. Spanning from the 15th century to the 1970s, the exhibition highlights the significant role women played in shaping artistic developments, even though their contributions were long overlooked.

Works by women draughtswomen and printmakers—already acquired by Duke Albert and Archduchess Marie Christine—are shown alongside pieces ranging from medieval convent woodcuts to early feminist positions. The presentation demonstrates that art history has always been shaped by women.

Based on an ongoing research project initiated by General Director Ralph Gleis, the exhibition reveals a remarkable diversity and numerous outstanding works that have rarely or never been shown before.

Emilie Mediz-Pelikan Female Centaur, 1895, The ALBERTINA Museum, Vienna

The exhibition highlights structures that form an essential yet often overlooked part of our urban infrastructure. This temporary layer keeps countless processes in the city running: from building and demolition to maintenance and guidance, all the way to protection and security. Labeled as temporary, such constructions blend into their surroundings and often remain below the threshold of perception. The exhibition makes this necessary background visible and brings it into focus.

Concept and design: KOSMOS architects

Foto: New Order: Rinofelino / Dreamstime.com

The exhibition Feminist Futures Forever at Belvedere 21 focuses on the polyphony of artistic practices. It ties together feminist demands, sociopolitical impacts, and different temporalities: each desire for change critically engages with its own past and present while looking toward the conditions of an imagined future.

Feminist Futures Forever adheres to this principle and, by looking back at the 1985 exhibition Kunst mit Eigen-Sinn (Art with a Mind of Its Own), brings international, intersectional, and intergenerational positions into dialogue with one another. The individual works of art are key: their narratives interact in spaces inspired by everyday life, enabling visitors to intuitively experience possible models for the future.

The show features works by artists ranging from the feminist avant-garde to the current generation.

Anna Meyer, Futurefeminismus (Wir lebten in hundert Jahren) – Tapp und Tast, 2019 Foto: Johannes Stoll / Belvedere, Wien © Bildrecht, Wien 2025

The ALBERTINA Museum is devoting a retrospective to Franz West (1947–2012) in honor of what would have been his 80th birthday. This nonconformist artist, known for an unruly personality characterized by willfulness and humor, participated in multiple editions of documenta and the Venice Biennale, whose Golden Lion he received in 2011.

It was under the influence of Viennese Actionism that West originated his legendary Adaptives in the 1970s: by being worn, held, or attached, the prosthesis-like forms adapt to the shapes of the body and give the audience the opportunity to interact. Objects thus become opportunities, with art becoming a situation. West’s oeuvre breaks boundaries, connects art with life, and has inspired multiple generations of artists. This presentation pays homage to one who removed art from its pedestal to place it in the thick of life.

ALBERTINA, Wien – Familiensammlung Haselsteiner © Archiv Franz West © Estate Franz Wien Foto: ALBERTINA, Wien

The film, Overt Listening, is the focus of Tiffany Sia’s
(b. 1988, Hong Kong) first institutional solo exhibition in Austria.
Set on the Kinmen Islands in Taiwan, just a few kilometers off the Chinese coast, the film critically examines the consequences of the Cold War, shedding light on the history of the difficult and often imperceptible geopolitical tensions in the Pacific Theater.
Sia combines footage of historical sites such as military bunkers with landscape scenes of deserted beaches.

This is accompanied by the sounds of radio broadcasts and military exercises. The work, which unfolds in a series of chapters within a spatial installation across the ground floor of the Kunsthalle Wien Museumsquartier, blends oral narratives, official historiography,
and popular culture into a comprehensive cinematic essay.

Overt Listening by Tiffany Sia is co-produced with the KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin.

Tiffany Sia, Overt Listening (Still), 2025 Courtesy der Künstlerin und Maxwell Graham, New York

Sober, clear, objective – these adjectives describe the new way of seeing the world following the fallout of World War I. The type of “art photography”, practiced until 1914 especially by ambitious amateurs, with its romanticizing estheticism, had become obsolete. This new movement provided a direct, unadorned pictorial style, which accommodated the needs of the medium and represented a clear commitment to technological Modernism. In Germany, Ellen Auerbach, Aenne Biermann, Karl Blossfeldt, Alfred Ehrhardt, Albert Renger-Patzsch and August Sander adhered to a “new objective photography” which culminated in the 1929 exhibition Film und Foto organized by the German Werkbund. Championing a visual language in keeping with the times, the exhibition, which was shown in Vienna straight after its initial presentation in Stuttgart, impacted on the oeuvres of Austrian photographers, including Trude Fleischmann, Grete Kolliner, Rudolf Koppitz and Otto Skall.

Following central motifs and themes, the exhibition showcases in excess of one hundred preeminent artistic positions of New Photography from the 1920s and 30s and features a selection of works from renowned European museums, institutions and collections, as well as works from private collections that have never been displayed before.

WIENER WERKSTÄTTE/WILHELM WILLINGER (Fotografie), Kleid entworfen von Eduard Wimmer-Wisgrill (1882–1961), 1919 © Leopold Museum, Wien | Foto: Leopold Museum, Wien

Paintings of monumental beauty and power. Emily Kame Kngwarreye’s (1910–1996) works embody a detailed understanding of her ancestors’ land, conveying stories and knowledge passed down through generations. Arguably the most famous figure in First Nations art, who did not begin painting until her late 70s, created a comprehensive body of work over the following eight years until her death—a body of work that is the focus of this exhibition featuring artists from Australia.

The exhibition draws on the ALBERTINA’s extensive collection in this field, which comprises around 100 works and was most recently expanded by a donation from the collector couple Elisabeth Bähr and Lindsay Frost on the occasion of the museum’s 250th anniversary. Australian photographers such as Destiny Deacon and Tracey Moffatt round out the presentation of art from Down Under.

Nyunmiti Burton Untitled (52-22AS), 2020 ALBERTINA, Wien © Bildrecht, Wien 2025 Foto: ALBERTINA, Wien

For the first time in Austria, a major retrospective is paying tribute to Erna Rosenstein (1913–2004), a key figure of the postwar Polish avant-garde.

Against the backdrop of the Shoah and political upheavals in Poland, her works bear witness to the resilience of an artist who never wavered in her political convictions and artistic ideals.

In a career spanning six decades, Rosenstein developed a multimedia visual cosmos that reveals how the present is woven together with memories of the past and how collective and individual experiences are intertwined.

Curated by Stephanie Auer.

Assistant Curator: Miroslav Haľák

Digital Photography Studio at the National Museum in Poznań The Estate of Erna Rosenstein - courtesy of Foksal Gallery Foundation and Hauser & Wirth