As part of their upcoming exhibition about the works of Gustav Klimt held in their collections, the Wien Museum (Vienna City Museum) has launched a competition on Facebook asking people to submit the worst of the Klimt kitsch. For those of you who haven’t been to Vienna: owing to the fame and popular appeal of Klimt’s works (especially The Kiss, 1907-8), tourist gift shops the city over are filled with every imaginable souvenir genre featuring the painting or interpretations of it. And from what I remember, the gift shop at the Wien Museum itself is no exception, even if a more tame example. 

But the idea of the museum addressing not just the artworks themselves, but also their fame and the way that they have been repurposed sounds like an interesting approach for the museum to take, especially as it is not a conventional art gallery, but a city history museum. I think it is also interesting how the gold and bombast of Klimt’s works is deemed more palatable and lends itself to these uses than the works of the Egon Schiele - a contemporary of Klimt’s - despite both being controversial in their time. 

Angelo Soliman: An African in Vienna

The latest temporary exhibition at the Vienna City Museum addresses the life of Angelo Soliman, former child slave, chamberlain, freemason and acquaintance of Mozart, tutor to the prince’s children and whose body after his death was stuffed and displayed in the Natural history museum as a “half-naked savage”, decorated with ostrich feathers and shells. 

I haven’t yet seen the exhibition, but I have good reason to be excited. The Vienna City Museum has had temporary exhibitions before that deal with the immigrant presence in Vienna (for example: Gastarbejteri), but the permanent exhibition has at last count (roughly 4 months ago) one depiction of an African person in full feather regalia from an ‘exotic goods’ shop sign which also features the only appearance of an Asian person, representation of the significant Turkish community on Vienna is limited to paintings of the antagonists of the Battle of Vienna 1683 alongside instruments of battle and siege - a major disservice to the 70, 445 people of Turkish descent in this city - Jewish people are only mentioned in relation to their persecution (pre-Holocaust, the permanent exhibition stops around the outbreak of WWI with Klimt and Schiele) and are neither depicted nor objects displayed to demonstrate their presence… the list goes on. 

Whilst this is again a temporary exhibition, the museum is currently in the process of redesigning the permanent exhibition and I sincerely hope that the research and reaction to the Soliman exhibition and Gastarbejteri will become permanent elements. Also exciting about the new exhibition is the challenging special events that are taking place as part of the events programme (pdf). My calendar is already marked with events ranging from museological discussion of the ethics of displaying human remains, to tours of the city highlighting the African presence in Vienna over centuries, and discussions about the changing attitudes towards the African community held together with African groups. And I intend to go and take part in lots of these events, so expect to be hearing more about this exhibition and the accompanying programme in the future!

amyjanebexplainsall:wordsandeggs:

Historic typography in Vienna, an alphabet called Lost Voices. By Phospho on Flickr, via WeLoveTypography.

Is Vienna really so different?

Reading the free newspaper on the bus the other day I came across an advert: “Vienna is different - me too!” (Wien ist anders - ich auch!) it proudly proclaimed. The description for the project read:

“All people are different. Diversity is the basis for vitality, creativity and innovation - it is also a challenge. It’s not always easy to understand people and situations which are ‘different’, but it can be inspiring and enriching. The City of Vienna and WWTF (Viennese Science, Research and Technology Fund) […] are funding initiatives which focus research on ‘Diversity and Identity’.”

Now, this sounded amazing. I am an immigrant to this city and country, a country with a much stronger than average far-right scene (the beginning of this decade they were in a coalition with the Conservatives and got more than 20% at the most recent election) and documented unease and discussion about school classes where a large proprtion of children don’t speak German well. But, when I visited the homepage (link above) I was actually really shocked to discover that ‘diversity’ was being celebrated through four interviews, 2 men, 2 women. All four white, all four professionals. Is the the acceptable face of immigration, diversity and vitality in Vienna?

Josef Penninger (pictured) is a geneticist. It’s not clear from his interview where he is from (his name is certainly from this neck of the woods), but he’s married to a Chinese lady. Ivona Brandic came to Austria as a refugee when she was a teenager (from Bosnia), but now works in computers and speaks fluent German, she mentions colleagues from Nigeria, Vietnam, Brazil. Monika Henzinger is also a computer person. She is German and lived in the US for a while, working for Google. She naively states that she thinks “everyone is welcome in the museums, churches and palaces in Vienna and nobody is excluded.” I don’t even know where to start with that. Churches? Palaces? Museums? What about education in general? Jobs? Coffee houses? Society? She does mention that perhaps this is easier for Europeans. But I think she means easier for people who don’t look different and have German as a mother tongue.

Andreas Gebesmair is a sociologist and gives more thoughtful consideration to the questions put to him and is quick to acknowledge that his experience as a white, Austrian male will of course differ dramatically from other people and groups. He also raises the point that certain types of diversity are seen as ‘chic’, and preferred to others. An important point he illustrates with the examples of world-music and cookery.

So, this project doesn’t seem to make much sense to me. Where exactly is the diversity? Vienna has a large Turkish minority, where is their representation? Diversity emcompasses religion too, how about someone talking about what it means to be Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, Jehovah’s Witness in Vienna? Our interests also underline our differences, why are we only talking to professionals/academics? What about teachers? Perhaps they have an inetresting story to tell about how they perceive their place in this city, or their experiences in the classroom with diverse classes?

The project seems only to offer a voice to those who have suceeded in finding their place in this society and in doing so silences the ongoing struggles faced by those who don’t speak the language well (or at all), don’t succeed in an educational system which isn’t always tailored to their ‘diverse’ needs and find themselves marked out as ‘other’ in this predominantly white, Catholic and conservative society.

This is what I am doing this afternoon after work!

From www.ottowagner.com

In the 1920s, the Social Democrats’ municipal government of “Red Vienna” realized a tremendous amount of building projects comprising more than 65,000 tenements and housing complexes. Yet what was even more remarkable than the quantity was the quality of this new social housing, which not only made homes affordable, but also offered a comprehensive infrastructure meeting peoples’ everyday needs, including such community facilities and places of solidarizing communication as kindergartens, libraries, and theaters.

The graduates from Otto Wagner’s School of Architecture at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts played a significant role in the implementation of the City Government’s public housing program. They were entrusted with the planning of the largest and most prestigious municipal tenement projects, and their architectural solutions still inform our idea of Vienna social housing in the 1920s.