Art and the City. A Tour of Contemporary Art Venues in Vienna

An art tour for those who want to stroll through main contemporary art museums in Vienna and get an insight into the artistic life of the Austrian capital city.

Austrian specificity at the collection of the Belvedere Gallery

We will start our art tour at Belvedere 21, which hosts exhibition of post-war Austrian art and is the best opportunity to see the work of all significant representatives contemporary art from Maria Lasnik and Vali Export to Erwin Wurm and Jakob Lena Knöbl. Here you can get an insight into the distinctive features of artistic practices of Austrian artists.

Independent and commercial art

We will continue our exploration of the contemporary art landscape at the Vienna Secession. It is not only a masterpiece of Art Nouveau architecture, but also the only exhibition hall in Austria where the artists themselves organise the exhibition activities. This is therefore where you can see what the local independent art scene is all about.

The leading Viennese galleries and the Kunsthalle at Karlspatz are also located in the neighbourhood of the Secession. If you wish, we’ll visit them too, to compare the demonstrably non-commercial and client-oriented options for presenting art.

Curator’s view

The mumok – Museum of Modern Art is the final destination for our walk. The museum’s exhibition strategy involves exposing themes that are of current concern to society, but in an extended temporal context, i.e. using the art of recent decades as an example. This policy means showing a combination of works from the museum’s own collections and borrowing from the collections of other museums, galleries and directly from artists. Here we will also be able to judge the work of the curators of the exhibitions and understand how an author’s view differs from a curator’s.

Art in the city

On this tour, you will see both the collections of museums and examples of art’s presence in public space. Our itinerary is structured so that you will see some examples of public art in Vienna.

The main focus of our walk is your tastes and interests in contemporary art, so if you are particularly interested in a specific collection or theme, then we will pay more attention to it and discuss the topics that are of importance to you in detail.

NB The itinerary may change due to temporary closure of museums or change of expositions.