The MuseumsQuartier includes various museums that host art exhibitions. It also has its own indoor exhibition space that features contemporary art tackling contemporary themes.
- Intermittent exhibitions
- Focus on video and art installations
- Especially those offering sociopolitical commentary
- Normally free entry
- Current exhibitions:
- LandRush (until May 7th, 2023)
- Oasis (until May 7th, 2023)
- See also:
Jump to:
Art and commentary
(Entrance to the MQ exhibition tract)
Vienna’s MuseumsQuartier (MQ) complex might best be described as a home for modern & contemporary art and culture. Not just a vehicle for displaying that art (see, for example the MQ Art Box or Leopold Museum) or expressing that culture but also a place for both to come into being.
Q21, for example, is a space for creativity: a working environment used by several dozen culture-oriented initiatives, groups, businesses, agencies and similar. From bookshops and film festivals to games makers and artists-in-residence.
Q21 also has its own MQ Freiraum and MQ Salon exhibition areas, located within an outer tract that once formed part of the Imperial stables (back when contemporary art meant a nice portrait of an Archduke in a wig).
The exhibitions within feature all forms of visual arts but with a small bias toward installations and video art. Expect to see both established and up and coming artists.
Equally, those same exhibitions tend to tackle themes critical to today’s world and offer their own form of sociopolitical commentary.
As such, you might drop in and discover everything from album posters to three-dimensional fabric art. And all with (normally) free entry.
So what’s on at the moment?
Current exhibition(s)
(Frauke Huber and Uwe H. Martin, LandRush, Full Circle, MV, 2014 ongoing © Frauke Huber and Uwe H. Martin, Bildrecht Wien 2023)
MQ Freiraum
- LandRush. Ventures into Global Agriculture (February 23rd to May 7th, 2023): video installation(s) created by Frauke Huber and Uwe H. Martin. A look at modern agriculture from various perspectives, exploring the consequences for climate change, biodiversity, soil quality and water resources.
MQ Salon
- Oasis (February 23rd to May 7th, 2023): Karina Mendreczky and Katalin Kortmann Járay create an installation consisting of an almost fae-like collection that flows with themes around life, death and our relationship to nature. Built from sculptures, photos, fabrics, drawings, and audio.
Selected past exhibitions
- No Dancing Allowed: a collection of multimedia installations viewing dance as a social and emotional need. Dance as a metaphor for expression, particularly freedom of expression. And all in the context of COVID-related restrictions and those imposed by the culture and politics of modern society.
- Overground Resistance: a selection of art as activism or activism as art. Pieces from various countries, created by those working in or with climate justice movements.
- Approximation by Bilderbuch: various artistic creations that came about through collaborations with or around the successful Austrian band Bilderbuch. A paeon to open minds, collaboration and rejecting the limits of your own metier. Unusually for Q21, this one needed an entrance ticket.
- Japan Unlimited: contemporary Japanese art at the interface between Honne (your genuine feelings and emotions) and Tatemae (those you can display in public according to the unwritten rules of society).
How to get there
Follow the travel tips at the end of the MuseumsQuartier page. As you stand outside facing the main entrance, turn left and follow the outside wall until you see the signs for the exhibitions.
Address: Museumsplatz 1, 1070 Vienna | Website