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, photo & art installations
- Strong on sociopolitical commentary
- Normally (but not always) free entry
- Current/future exhibitions:
- Becoming Earth by Ursula Biemann (from Sept 27, 2024)
- Point Zero by Rodrigo Braga (ditto)
- 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/next exhibition(s)
- Becoming Earth: Ursula Biemann uses the MQ Freiraum to address issues around indigenous peoples in the Amazon, notably the impacts of oil and mining industries, unfettered trade and globalisation on their living space. They also explore how indigenous knowledge and experience might help solve pressing challenges of the future (September 27th, 2024 to February 23rd, 2025).
- Point Zero: installation in the MQ Salon by Rodrigo Braga. The Brazilian artist uses the symbolism of stones to reflect the (often contradictory) relationship between humanity and the environment (September 27th, 2024 to February 23rd, 2025)
Selected past exhibitions
- Resistance, Flood, Fire, Resistance: photographs by Beate Gütschow of natural disasters but after the mass media have long moved on
- From a Tongue we are Losing: photographs by Laure Winants exploring light and colour in the Arctic
- Play and Punish: photographs by Karolina Wojtas, asking questions of schools and education through surrealist images
- On Abortion: photographs by Laia Abril exploring the consequences of restrictions on access to abortions
- Schattenwinde: photographs by Gundula Schulze Eldowy featuring her austere images of Germany taken across 1977-1990
- Me and mine: photographs by Mari Katayama, who uses her own body to explore issues around society and concepts of beauty
- Crossing Lines. Politics of Images: part of the Foto Wien festival, which had its 2023 HQ in the MQ. A timely examination of photos in political communication and image projection, touching on such topics as distribution & social media, authenticity, and blurred lines of reality vis a vis propaganda.
- LandRush. Ventures into Global Agriculture: 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.
- Oasis: Karina Mendreczky and Katalin Kortmann Járay created an installation consisting of an almost fae-like collection that flowed with themes around life, death and our relationship to nature. Built from sculptures, photos, fabrics, drawings, and audio.
- 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