Discover Germany | Culture | Experience of the Month, Austria
MuseumsQuartier Wien. Photo: © Hertha Hurnaus
EXPERIENCE OF THE MONTH, AUSTRIA
Take a piece of glamorous Vienna home
Vienna’s museums – always worth a visit If you have already been to Vienna you may have visited the famous Schloss Schönbrunn or the Stephansdom. You may have enjoyed a glass of delicious Austrian wine in one of the countless Heurigen, the original Austrian rustic version of a pub; or you may even have savoured a piece of luscious Sacher-Torte in the traditional Café Demel. Yet Vienna has so much more to offer. TEXT: SILKE HENKELE
The MuseumsQuartier Wien is proof of that. “As one of the largest art and culture complexes worldwide, the MuseumsQuartier accommodates a variety of almost 60 cultural attractions under its roof, among them the museums introduced below,” explains Dr. Christian Strasser, director of the MuseumsQuartier. Contemporary architecture and buildings from the 18th and 19th century form a perfect synthesis of the old and new; thereby creating a welcoming mixture of cultural space, rest areas, quaint cafés and spacious courts. 50 | Issue 46 | January 2017
This perfect blend of art and leisure forms an unequalled urban space adored not only by the Viennese. The Austrian cultural hotspot opened in 2001 and since then has mesmerised thousands of visitors – an appeal that is to be continued in 2017. “During our ‘Summer in MQ’ there are a lot of cultural events in our courtyards, all free of charge,” offers Strasser. Numerous live concerts, the literature festival ‘O-Töne’ as well as the digital film festival ‘frame(o)ut’ are guaranteed to
add to MuseumsQuartier’s particular atmosphere. mumok The mumok (short for Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien) is the largest museum for contemporary art in central Europe. “Our exhibits are a true engagement with art,” states Karola Kraus, director at mumok.“Visitors to mumok will encounter an exquisite blend of international and Austrian avant-garde art, and you may find works by Picasso, Andy Warhol or Franz West on display,”Kraus adds. Numerous special exhibitions give mumok’s visitors even more opportunities to engage with contemporary art and to thus become acquainted with a symbiosis of tradition and experiment, of past and present – an engagement that is continued in mumok’s very own cinema.