This high-profile panel discussion, organized in cooperation with PARNASS Kunstmagazin and the Dorotheum, is dedicated to the international art market and the art world itself as a constant system of learning and transformation.

Together with leading voices from the fields of art, politics, and business, the discussion will address questions such as:

• Which current trends are shaping the art world today?

• How do value and knowledge systems influence the global art market?

• What can the art world learn from its own institutional mechanisms – and what should it unlearn?

PROGRAM

17.00 Keynote
• Sepp Schellhorn (State Secretary at the Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs of the Republic of Austria)

17.20 Panel discussion

• Sebastian Haselsteiner (Head, STRABAG ART, Austria)
• Timo Miettinen (Collector, Finland)
• Eva Schlegel (Artist, Austria)
• Birgit Vikas (CEO, Kunsttrans, Austria)
• moderated by Silvie Aigner (Editor-in-Chief, PARNASS Art Magazine, Austria)

Registration required: invitation@parnass.at (click here to sign up)

SHORT BIOGRAPHIES:

Sepp Schellhorn has been State Secretary at the Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs of the Republic of Austria since 3 March. He was born on 12 May 1967 in Schwarzach im Pongau. He grew up in his parents’ business and first attended the hotel management school in Bad Hofgastein before spending his apprenticeship years in Italy, France and in the United States. After his return, he took over his parents’ business in 1996, graduated from the business academy in 1997 and went on to open several restaurants. Sepp Schellhorn entered politics in 1989 as a substitute member of the Goldegg municipal council. He was President of the Austrian Hotel Association (ÖHV) from 2003 to 2013 and was sworn in as a member of the National Council in 2014. From 2016 to 2021, he held various positions at federal and state level for NEOS. Sepp Schellhorn returned to the National Council in 2024 after resigning his seat in 2021.

Timo Miettinen, chairman of EM Group Oy in Finland, has had a close connection with art ever since he was fifteen years old. Together with his mother, he collected Finnish landscape paintings of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Since 2004, he expands the collection with contemporary art. The collection comprises artworks by contemporary artists of various generations and nationalities, mainly paintings, drawings and sculptures, among them a series of marble sculptures from the Roman Times.
 

Eva Schlegel
Born in 1960
Lives and works in Vienna
1979–85 Studied at the University of Applied Arts, Vienna, under Oswald Oberhuber
1997–2006 Professor of Art and Photography at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna
2011 Commissioner of the Austrian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale
Numerous exhibitions in Austria and abroad, including most recently KOWANZ. ORTNER. SCHLEGEL at the Leopold Museum.

 
Birgit Vikas, CEO of Kunsttrans, has been leading the 160-year-old family business for around 20 years.