The new museum’s collection includes works by Georg Baselitz, Anselm Kiefer, Cindy Sherman and other. The renovation project cost €57 million
The Albertina Museum in the Künstlerhaus on Karlsplatz. Source: Peter Gugerell/TAN
Vienna’s Albertina museum has launched its Albertina Modern branch, which focuses on art of the 20th and 21st century, the Art Newspaper reports.
The new museum was established after Karlheinz and Agnes Essl donated a significant part of their collection – 1323 artworks valued at around t €90 million – to the Albertina. The collection includes works by Georg Baselitz, Alex Katz, Tony Cragg, Neo Rauch and Cindy Sherman.
The couple was supported by industrial tycoon Hans Peter Haselsteiner, who purchased part of their collection and agreed to give it to the Albertina on a 27-year loan. His foundation, Haselsteiner Familien Privatstiftung, paid for the display. Haselsteiner acquired a controlling stake in the Künstlerhaus, a building designed by architect August Weber in the 1860s, and solved the problem of the new museum’s location. The renovation lasted for three years.
After the modernisation, the building preserved its historic appearance, but its facades and interiors were renovated to adjust the infrastructure to current requirements. Exhibition rooms and offices occupy 2,500 square metres, the original occupant, artists’ association Künstlerhaus, has 900 square metres.
The new museum houses a collection of around 60,000 works – a significant part from the Essl family’s collection and new acquisitions, such as a vast selection of German and American art of the late 20th century from Cologne-based art dealer Rafael Jablonka and a collection of works by Austrian post-war artists from gallerists Dagmar and Manfred Chobot.
The Albertina Modern’s inaugural project titled The Beginning. Art in Austria, 1945 to 1980 is a retrospective overview of the epoch’s main trends and names.
Despite the programme title, it is a temporary exhibition. The museum’s concept is to display large temporary theme exhibitions.
The museum’s curatorial team includes Brigitte Borchhardt-Birbaumer, Berthold Ecker, Elisabeth Dutz, Antonia Hoerschelmann and Angela Stief. They focus on the main trends of the post-war art from social criticism to protests against all sorts of dogmas, ending at the threshold to postmodernism.
The show will run until November 2020. Further plans have not been announced.
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