The spacious halls of the Permanent Collection were redesigned by contemporary artists in order to present selected highlights from the MAK Collection. In a unique interplay of artistic heritage and contemporary interventions, the historical holdings have been staged in a way that invites close examination of the individual exhibits.
This presentation’s thematic core is the multifarious struggle to arrive at an Austrian, modern, bourgeois, and democratic style. Today, this chapter of design and arts and crafts history—subsumed under the terms of Secessionism and Jugendstil—serves like no other to underpin Austrian identity.