🇦🇹 MUMOK

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MUMOK

The mumok

“mumok” is the German-language acronym used to refer to the Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien. The largest museum of modern and contemporary art in Central Europe, it boasts an unrivalled collection, including the principal works of classical modernism, Pop Art, the Fluxus, Minimal Art, Concept Art and Viennese Actionism, through to contemporary art.

Housed in a modern wing made using basalt lava, the mumok blends in beautifully with the historic buildings of the MuseumsQuartier surrounding it. The MuseumsQuartier was brought to life on the site of what were once the imperial stables. The stables were built by Johann Fischer von Erlach during the reign of Kaiser Karl VI, in the early eighteenth century, on the edge of the open land that was once the glacis, opposite the Hofburg. The complex of buildings, which would once have housed 600 horses and apartments for countless workers and pitches for carriages, retains a host of tiny details to remind the visitor of its original function. Completed in 1725, the main façade remains one of the longest Baroque frontispieces in Vienna to this day.

After 1918, when the monarchy came to an end, the spacious venue and its open-air areas were repurposed, to be used for trade fair events. This continued until the early 1980s, when the Viennese trade fair company Messe Wien was relocated, and the decision taken to use the former stables as a cultural forum. The expansion of the MuseumsQuartier was completed in 2001, and with its 90,000 square metres of floor space and 60 cultural institutions, it is one of the world’s largest spaces devoted to the arts and culture.

The story of the mumok actually begins in 1962. Originally founded as the Museum of the 20th Century, the museum was located in an exhibition building in Schweizer Garten park, nearby what is now Hauptbahnhof, the city’s central station. The collection at the time consisted of 90 works; it grew steadily, however, and in 1979 the museum had to rent additional exhibition space, at the Palais Liechtenstein in the 9th District.

First and foremost, it has been art loans from Aachen-based collectors Irene and Peter Ludwig that have provided the mumok with premier league additions to its exhibitions. The foundation that made this possible, the Österreichische Ludwig-Stiftung, was founded in 1981, since when many of the loans have been transferred to the mumok collection on a permanent basis. Further generous gifts from the art patrons have resulted in the museum having the epithet “Stiftung Ludwig” added to its name. The collection now boasts some 230 hugely important works of art, including pieces by Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol, thanks to the German industrialist couple.

Since moving to the MuseumsQuartier in 2001, the mumok has found itself an adequate home. Nowadays, some 10,000 works by around 1,600 different artists are exhibited there, in a modern ambience covering 4,800 square metres of floor space. The mumok collection is visited by more than 3 million art lovers every year. And given the extraordinary range of the art treasures it contains, spanning the 20th and 21st centuries, it’s no wonder. The Classical Modernism section is home to the most important of these trends and their most important protagonists, such as Richard Gerstl, Oskar Kokoschka and Ernst Kirchner for Expressionism, Henri Laurens and Giacomo Balla for Cubism and Futurism, Piet Mondrian and László Moholy-Nagy for Constructive trends, and Bauhaus. Dada and Surrealism are represented by the likes of Francis Picabia, Max Ernst and René Magritte.

The highlights of the Ludwig Collection are considered the “key works” of American Pop Art. Thanks to Irene and Peter Ludwig’s passion for art collection and their far-sighted understanding of art, the mumok is now home to Claes Oldenburg’s Mouse Museum, Andy Warhol’s Orange Car Crash and Robert Indiana’s Love Rising - Black and White Love. Visitors can also enjoy For Martin Luther King and works by such greats as Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, John Chamberlain and Tom Wesselman. It also boasts a number of key pieces by artists such as Hanne Darboven, Robert Smithson, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Joseph Beuys and even Pablo Picasso.

In the Austrian capital, however, the mumok couldn’t be the Museum of Modern Art unless it devoted sufficient space to Viennese Actionism. This artistic trend, which emerged at the beginning of the 1960s and worked with real bodies, objects and substances, created a huge stir. As well as contemporaries such as Günter Brus, Otto Mühl and Rudolf Schwarzkogler, Hermann Nitsch is probably the Actionist painter to have made most of a name for himself internationally. Despite continually running into difficulties with the authorities early on his Actionist career – he would perform his art in public in Vienna, even spending several weeks in prison for doing so at one point – Nitsch later pocketed a string of prizes and awards. The mumok now functions as a competence centre for Viennese Actionism. Key works by Viennese Actionists are exhibited here, alongside a globally unique collection of action photography, sketches, various drawings, notebooks, letters and historical documents from the time.

The contemporary works by Austrian and international artists shown at the mumok are yet another perfect reason to visit the collection; the collection includes the likes of Yto Barrada, Tom Burr, Josef Dabernig, Andrea Fraser, David Goldblatt, Dorit Margreiter, Zwelethu Mthethwa, Marge Monko and Henrik Olesen, as well as Florian Pumhösl, Rebecca Quaytma, Zineb Sedira, Cindy Sherman, Vivan Sundaram, Emily Wardill, Franz West and Heimo Zobernig.

And this is far from all the museum has to offer. To find out more, however, be sure to venture out on your own voyage of discovery at the mumok sometime soon…

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