Leopold Museum Celebrates St. Leopold’s Day on 15th November 2024
12.11.2024
Free Museum Admission All Day for All the Family
15th November marks another St. Leopold’s Day: This year, too, the Leopold Museum offers a varied program for all the family to celebrate this occasion. On the feast day in honor of St. Leopold – the national patron saint of Austria and patron saint of the states of Vienna and Lower Austria – the museum offers families, children and teenagers free admission to the museum to enjoy a multi-faceted art education program.
“We are delighted that – for the fourth year running – we are inviting families, children and teenagers to spend this day, on which schools are closed throughout Vienna and Lower Austria, with us at Leopold Museum, surrounded by art and culture. The free program includes hourly guided tours of the permanent presentation Vienna 1900. Birth of Modernism, as well as an open art studio for children aged six to twelve.”
Hans-Peter Wipplinger, Director of the Leopold Museum
The Program on St. Leopold’s Day
Guided tours for all the family*: Permanent presentation Vienna 1900. Birth of Modernism
Travel back in time to Vienna 1900 – get to know artists, designers and architects, including Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Oskar Kokoschka, Koloman Moser, Josef Hoffmann and Otto Wagner, listen to exciting stories and discover the secrets of their art.
Start: 10.30, 11.30 am and 12.30, 1.30, 2.30, 3.30, 4.30 pm, free admission, registration at level 0 (Atrium)
LEO Kids’ Studio: “Pattern Workshop”
A painting with triangles, circles and rectangles, posters with patterns, or fabric designs with flower tendrils and geometrical forms… take inspiration from the works in the exhibitions Vienna 1900. Birth of Modernism and Poetry of the Ornament. The Backhausen Archive and design your own world of patterns.
10 am to 5 pm, free admission, registration at level 1 (Hoffmann Lounge), for children aged six to twelve
Current Exhibitions at the Leopold Museum
Poetry of the Ornament. The Backhausen Archive affords insights into the unique collection – comprising several thousands of objects and given to the Leopold Museum as a permanent loan in 2023 – of the tradition-steeped company Joh. Backhausen & Söhne founded in 1849. The company is among the most renowned producers of upholstery, fashion fabrics and decorative textiles in Viennese history. From 1903, Backhausen focused on collaborations with eminent artists of Viennese Modernism, including Josef Hoffmann, Koloman Moser, Otto Wagner, Joseph Maria Olbrich, Jutta Sika, Dagobert Peche, My Ullmann and Otto Prutscher. The company specialized in translating their designs into commercial products and established itself as the main supplier of the Wiener Werkstätte.
We wish to thank and pay tribute to Dr. Louise Kiesling (1957-2022) who, with passionate enthusiasm and great ideational and monetary commitment, championed the archive’s systematic scientific reappraisal, the creation of an inventory, as well as the photographic documentation and the storing of the holdings in keeping with museum conservation standards, thus succeeding in preserving this precious cultural heritage for posterity. Without her valuable work for the Backhausen Archive, which in 2022 has been placed under monument protection in its entirety owing to its uniqueness, this exhibition would not have been possible.
The retrospective Rudolf Wacker. Magic and Abysses of Reality illustrates the Vorarlberg painter and draftsman’s multi-faceted oeuvre as one of the most essential Austrian contributions to New Objectivity in Europe. Based on around 250 exhibits, the presentation traces Rudolf Wacker’s (1893–1939) artistic development, shines the spotlight on thematic emphases of his oeuvre and showcases the eminent quality and perfection of his works.
In his art, Wacker focused on his immediate surroundings, on the “magic of the everyday”, which he condensed in his still lifes, on the landscapes of his hometown, on female nudes and self-portraits. His work was inextricably linked with the socio-political events of the 1910s to the 1930s. Examples of his independent variant of the style of New Objectivity enter into a dialogue in the exhibition with select works by exponents of German New Objectivity, including Albert Birkle, Otto Dix, Alexander Kanoldt, Anton Räderscheidt, Georg Schrimpf and Gustav Wunderwald. During the rise of National Socialism in the 1930s, Wacker created encrypted still lifes, which, in a subtle manner, allow us to relate to the threats of the time.
The permanent presentation Vienna 1900. Birth of Modernism illustrates this era’s enormous wealth of artistic and intellectual achievements with all their cultural, social, political and scientific implications. Based on the collection compiled by Rudolf Leopold, and complemented by loans from private and institutional collections, it conveys the spirit of the world’s former cultural capital and its atmosphere characterized by contrasts.
At the time of the fin-de-siècle, Vienna was a veritable hotbed of an incredibly fruitful intellectual life in the areas of the arts and sciences. Paradoxically, this unparalleled golden age coincided with increasing political and social power struggles and conflicts of interest between the various nationalities of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Rather than being limited to specific areas, this heyday occurred in the most diverse disciplines, from painting, literature and music, via theater, dance and architecture, all the way to medicine, psychology, philosophy, jurisprudence and economy.
Spanning 3,000m² on three floors, and covering a period of c. 1870 to 1930, the exhibition impresses with its great diversity of media, ranging from painting, graphic art, sculpture and photography, via glass, ceramics, metal, textiles, leather and jewelry, all the way to items of furniture and entire interior decorations.
The Leopold Museum is open on 15th November 2024 from 10 am to 6 pm with free admission for families, children and teenagers.
* Free admission for families: max. 2 adults + up to 3 children/teenagers under the age of 19
* Free admission for children and teenagers
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