Leopold Museum: Exhibitions in 2022

13.12.2021

Director Hans-Peter Wipplinger presents next year’s program

The Director of the Leopold Museum Hans-Peter Wipplinger presents the museum’s program for the upcoming year, which includes nine exhibitions and a renewed cooperation with ImPulsTanz Festival in the summer.

Once again on display from Sunday, 12th December: Vienna 1900, The Schedlmayer Collection and Ludwig Wittgenstein’s photographic practice

Following the most recent lockdown, the museum will once more show its permanent presentation Vienna 1900. Birth of Modernism, which spans three floors and features more than 1,300 objects, from 12th December. The exhibition is regularly extended with new loans or acquisitions, such as the painting The Altar of Dionysus by Gustav Klimt (1886) and Hans Makart’s triptych Modern Cupids (1868) which the Leopold Museum has recently received as generous private donations.

The exhibition The Schedlmayer Collection. A Discovery!, which opened in September and showcases the private collection that Hermi (1941–2018) and Fritz Schedlmayer (1939–2013) carefully compiled over many years, will be on display until 18th April. Thanks to the collaborative partnership with the Schedlmayer family, it has been possible to secure a number of extraordinary works, which are currently shown in the exhibition, as permanent loans for the Leopold Museum, making them accessible to the public beyond the duration of this presentation.

The exhibition Ludwig Wittgenstein. Photography as Analytical Practice, which opened shortly before the lockdown and will be shown until 6th March, does not focus on the philosopher’s ground-breaking writings but on his interest in photography. Featuring more than 200 objects, the presentation showcases Wittgenstein as a photographer – as an author, collector and arranger of photographs – while highlighting biographical aspects and connections to his work as a philosopher. Wittgenstein’s photographic practice is placed into a dialogue with more than 140 works by around 50 contemporary artists.

The 2022 exhibitions in detail

Vienna 1900. Birth of Modernism

Since 16th March 2019

Curator: Hans-Peter Wipplinger

The permanent presentation affords insights into the wealth of the era’s artistic and intellectual achievements with their cultural, social, political and scientific implications. Based on the collection compiled by Rudolf Leopold, and complemented by numerous loans, the exhibition conveys the atmosphere of the world’s former cultural capital and highlights the sense of departure, characterized by contrasts, that was prevalent around 1900. The presentation features some 1,300 exhibits over three floors on more than 3,000 m2 of exhibition space. Tracing an arc from c. 1870 to 1930, the exhibition is characterized by its great variety of media, ranging from paintings, graphic works, sculptures and photographs via archival materials, glass, ceramic, metal, textile and leather works to jewelry, items of furniture and interior decorations of apartments. The exhibition is frequently extended with new loans or acquisitions, such as the painting The Altar of Dionysus by Gustav Klimt (1886) and Hans Makart’s triptych Modern Cupids (1868) which the Leopold Museum has recently received as private donations. For conservational reasons, photographs, graphic works and archival material are regularly replaced, allowing for new juxtapositions and thus for new perspectives within the presentation.

The Schedlmayer Collection. A Discovery!

10th Sept. 2021–18th April 2022

Curator: Ivan Ristić

Hermi (1941–2018) and Fritz Schedlmayer (1939–2013) spent several decades compiling an eminent selection of artisan craftwork and examples of fine arts. The history of the collection began in 1989, when the Austrian couple bought the Villa Rothberger in Baden near Vienna. They restored the house, which in 1912 had been extensively refurbished and furnished by the architect Otto Prutscher, discovered Prutscher’s multi-faceted work and set about researching his life and oeuvre with meticulousness and passion. Hermi and Fritz Schedlmayer additionally acquired exceptional works of German Expressionism by Karl Hofer, Christian Rohlfs, Max Pechstein and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, along with paintings by representatives of Austrian Modernism, including Broncia Koller-Pinell, Jean Egger, Anton Kolig, Franz Wiegele and Anton Faistauer.

Ludwig Wittgenstein. Photography as Analytical Practice

12th Nov. 2021–6th March 2022

Curators: Verena Gamper, Gregor Schmoll

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) is one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century. Rather than focusing on Wittgenstein’s ground-breaking philosophical writings, the exhibition highlights his interest in photography, showcasing Wittgenstein as an author, collector and arranger of photographs. While previous explorations have focused primarily on his photo album, on composite photography and on his intention to write a “Laocoon for photographers”, his photographic practice actually ranged from his own use of the camera and the conception, compilation and montage of photographs, via the cropping of prints to the commenting, mailing and requesting of photographs. In the exhibition, this practice is placed into a dialogue with works by contemporary artists, including Baldessari, Bechtold, Boltanski, Darboven, Eliasson, Feldmann, Förg, Goldin, Handke, Hujar, Jermolaewa, Jürgenssen, Kelley, Kubelka, Levine, Lockhart, Maurer, Paglen, Polke, Richter, Rosler, Ruff, Sherman, Sieverding, Spiluttini, Sturtevant, Sugimoto, Warhol, Wearing, Weibel, Zitko and Zobernig.

Alfred Kubin. Confessions of a Tortured Soul

25th March 2022–10th July 2022

Curator: Hans-Peter Wipplinger

The art of the great draftsman, illustrator and author of the novel The Other Side, Alfred Kubin (1877-1959), appears more current today than ever before: for it was violence, wartime destruction, pandemics, natural disasters, the manipulation of the masses and other abysses of human existence that pervaded his narrational works. The exhibition at the Leopold Museum is the first to attempt an exploration of Kubin’s oneiric worlds – which all too often enter nightmarish-somber spheres – in terms of their relation to the unconscious and the deep dimensions of the psyche. In this interpretation attempt, the psychoanalyst and psychiatrist August Ruhs will orient himself on works by Kubin selected by curator Hans-Peter Wipplinger with specific thematic emphases in mind. Kubin’s works are placed into a dialogue with works by artists of the 19th century and of Classical Modernism from which Kubin derived inspiration for his oeuvre.

The Noblest of the Noble. Writers’ Portraits from the Klewan Collection

6th May 2022–29th Aug. 2022

Curator: Stefan Kutzenberger

This exhibition is the first to present select examples from the donation, comprising some 600 works, made by Helmut Klewan, an art collector who amassed a comprehensive compilation of writers’ portraits. The presentation focuses on the double legibility of these portraits – for instance, does Alfred Kubin’s depiction of Adalbert Stifter say more about the writer or the artist himself? The exhibition exposes interconnections between literature and the fine arts, weaves a tight net between centuries and art disciplines, and brings kindred thinkers and artist circles back to life. Artists including Max Beckmann, Lovis Corinth, George Grosz, Oskar Kokoschka, Isolde Ohlbaum, Emil Orlik, Pablo Picasso, Auguste Rodin and Félix Vallotton captured close friends or literary heroes on paper or canvas, showing that literature and the fine arts overcome borders and make the world larger rather than smaller.

Franz Hagenauer

20th May 2022–12th Sept. 2022

Curator: Ivan Ristić

In the oeuvre of Franz Hagenauer (1906–1986) sculpture and arts and crafts entered into a tension-filled synthesis based on the human body and on shapes derived from the flora and fauna. His training under Franz Čižek at the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts was followed by studies in the sculpture class of Anton Hanak and a stint in Josef Hoffmann’s class for metalwork, while Dagobert Peche afforded him insights into the operations of the Wiener Werkstätte. Often reduced to ovoids, his heads and busts made from chased metal and created from the late 1920s onwards, are among the most radical Modernist forays in Austrian art of the interwar period. The loans shown at the Leopold Museum hail from the world’s largest Franz Hagenauer collection, owned by Erich Breinsberg, from the MAK – Museum of Applied Arts, and from further private collections. The exhibition is created in scientific cooperation with the MAK and with kind support from the car dealership Liewers and the Breinsberg family.

Dealing in Copies. The “Photographic Art Publishers Otto Schmidt”

20th May 2022–28th Aug. 2022

Curator: Michael Ponstingl (Photoinstitut Bonartes)

Otto Schmidt (1849–1920) operated one of the largest photographic art publishing houses in Vienna around 1900. The company offered study sheets (Études d’après nature) as templates for artists, architects, carpenters and decorators. The Atelier Schmidt additionally produced a series of Viennese types in nostalgic-romanticized dress which offered a kind of ethnography of the Imperial capital city. Schmidt’s production of nude photographs may be regarded as the most extensive within the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. This exhibition is a contribution to the exploration of professional photography in the 19th century. Using the example of the photographic publishing house Otto Schmidt, it examines the insoluble connection between esthetics, economy, image circulation and consumption as well as social parameters which include the exchange relationship between photography and the fine arts, especially painting. This exhibition is a cooperation with Photoinstitut Bonartes.

Hagenbund. From Moderate to Radical Modernism

16th Sept. 2022–6th Feb. 2023

Curators: Dominik Papst, Hans-Peter Wipplinger

The artists’ association Hagenbund was founded in 1900 in opposition to the conservative Künstlerhaus. In 1922, the writer Robert Musil called it “today’s most radical group” among Viennese artists’ associations. The Zedlitzhalle in Vienna’s first district gave a sense of identity to members and served as a venue for innovative exhibition concepts and international art presentations. Members of the Hagenbund exhibited their works in 1904 at the World’s Fair in St. Louis, and in 1911 at the Esposizione internazionale in Rome. Following presentations at the Kunstschau Wien 1908 and 1909, the association became an eminent platform for young, contemporary art in the 1910s. A significant milestone was the exhibition Sonderausstellung Malerei und Plastik held in 1911 and featuring works by Kokoschka, Faistauer, Kolig and others, while a presentation in 1912 included works by Schiele. This second exhibition was so progressive that it led to the Hagenbund’s eviction from the Zedlitzhalle, from which it remained banned until 1920. In the 1920s, exponents of the Hagenbund took the step from moderate to radical Modernism. The National Socialists prompted the association’s dissolution in 1938; members were forced to emigrate or were murdered in concentration camps. This spelled the end of the Hagenbund’s cosmopolitan and intercultural spirit.

Tilla Durieux. A Witness to a Century and Her Roles

14th Oct. 2022–27th Feb. 2023

Curator: Daniela Gregori

She was a celebrated star of the film and theater, a modern woman of the 1920s, politically active and perhaps the most portrayed woman of her time. The roles of Tilla Durieux (1880–1971) were as remarkable and varied as the artists for whom she posed as a model. These included Auguste Renoir, Max Slevogt, Franz von Stuck, Charley Toorop, Ernst Barlach, Oskar Kokoschka, Max Oppenheimer, as well as Frieda Riess and Lotte Jacobi. The Leopold Museum is the first museum to investigate the fascination Tilla Durieux held already for her contemporaries, and to explore the traces of her scintillating personality through portraits of all media and materials. Featuring rarely exhibited archival material and loans from Austrian and international museums and private collections, the presentation highlights Durieux’s career, her social and artistic milieu as well as her life which spanned almost a century and was shaped by political upheaval.

ImPulsTanz – International Dance Festival at the Leopold Museum

In the upcoming year, the Leopold Museum will host ImPulsTanz – International Dance Festival for the fifth time. Following highly successful cooperations in 2016, 2017, 2019 and 2021, the Leopold Museum will once more become an animated venue for dance this coming summer with state-of-the-art performances, laboratories, workshops and research projects. From 7th July to 7th August 2022, the ImPulsTanz Festival will be held at the most important stages in Vienna – from the Burgtheater and the Volkstheater to the Odeon and the Schauspielhaus – and, with its unique program of workshops and research projects, will transform the ART-for-ART workshop grounds at Vienna’s Arsenal as well as the rehearsal stages of the Vienna State Opera, the Burgtheater and the Volksoper into the world’s largest workshop center.

Cooperation partners: Wiener Städtische Versicherungsverein and PORR

Since its inception almost 200 years ago, the Wiener Städtische Versicherungsverein has championed social and cultural causes. Its cooperation with the Leopold Museum dates back a decade and will continue in 2022. In the context of this active partnership, the Wiener Städtische Versicherungsverein promotes the Leopold Museum’s exhibition program as well as the activities for children as part of the workshop series LEO Kids Studio. The Vienna Insurance Group’s principal shareholder supports many initiatives in the field of visual arts as well as select projects and exhibitions. Furthermore, the Wiener Städtische Versicherungsverein owns its own art collection which is housed in the company’s headquarters, the Ringturm.

As supporters of the arts with special ties to Viennese Modernism, the company PORR, which is one of the largest construction companies in Austria and among the top players in Europe, will invite visitors to the Leopold Museum to enjoy free admission every first Thursday of each month between 6 pm and 9 pm. In addition to the free admission, the company will also offer free guided tours “powered by PORR”. The company’s history ties in with the museum’s permanent presentation Vienna 1900. Birth of Modernism which shines a spotlight on urban development and architecture. PORR played an important part in the construction of the Vienna Ringstrasse as the largest city development project in the Austrian Empire, in the introduction of the first mountain spring pipeline, in the extension of Vienna’s sewage system and in the construction of the city railway. The program of these “PORR Nights” at the Leopold Museum will be shaped by changing thematic emphases with a focus on urban development and architecture, and will include public lectures, discussions and film screenings.

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