Reopening of the Leopold Museum: Special offers to mark restart

25.05.2020

Once more on display from 27th May: Hundertwasser – Schiele, German Expressionism and Vienna 1900

Following its closure due to the coronavirus, the Leopold Museum is set to reopen its doors on Wednesday, 27th May, ahead of Pentecost weekend. The first 100 visitors will receive free admission to the museum as well as a goody bag full of surprises.

Director Hans-Peter Wipplinger: “Together with my team, I am delighted to open the museum to the public once more from 27th May – for museums are public places whose very purpose it is to be there for society. Reflecting social phenomena from the past and the present, their collections provide incalculable value to our culture and to the formation of our identity. With its extraordinary collection of art from the 19th century and Modernism, the Leopold Museum makes essential contributions to Austria’s rich cultural heritage, and sees itself as a site fostering education, experience, discourse and discovery of eminent quality. Especially in times of crisis, in which the things we have taken for granted must be reexamined due to a changed empirical world, the active engagement with art harnesses a key potential for reconfiguring existing concepts and expanding horizons. Now more than ever, museums as important and productive places and hubs for ideas and exchange are called upon to make their contributions as social motors and intellectual motivators.”

The museum’s reopening, and especially the exhibition Hundertwasser-Schiele. Imagine Tomorrow, provides an important statement for our present: Hundertwasser’s visionary concepts, his creative prowess and particularly his ecological commitment could not be more relevant today. Hundertwasser’s manifestos are messages for active and committed citizens who are highly important for social progress. His conviction that globalization, the overexploitation of natural resources, the climate catastrophe, the reduction of biodiversity etc. are all connected could not be a more fitting message for our times: “We must strive for a peace treaty with nature, the only superior creative power on which man depends. (…) The creation of man and the creation of nature must be reunited. The schism of these creations has had catastrophic consequences for nature and man.” (Hundertwasser, 1998)

Along with the exhibition Hundertwasser – Schiele, which was only on display for around two and a half weeks following its impressive launch in late February, visitors may once again experience the comprehensive, constantly changing permanent presentation Vienna 1900. Birth of Modernism as well as the exhibition on German Expressionism from the Braglia and Johenning Collections.

Permanent presentation Vienna 1900. Birth of Modernism

The comprehensive exhibition Vienna 1900. Birth of Modernism, extending over three floors, highlights the wealth and splendor of the artistic and intellectual achievements of an era spanning the emergence of the Secessionists all the way to the collapse of the monarchy and the deaths of eminent artists of Viennese Modernism, including Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Koloman Moser and Otto Wagner, in 1918. The new presentation not only shows masterpieces from the collection of the Leopold Museum but also permanent loans from Austria and abroad, thus allowing visitors to experience the atmosphere of this vibrant time with all its contradictions.

German Expressionism. The Braglia and Johenning Collections

Also on display again is the presentation German Expressionism. The Braglia and Johenning Collections. With the consent of the collectors and other lenders, the exhibition, which features some 100 exhibits and showcases a comprehensive selection of Expressionist works from the renowned European art collections compiled by Gabriele and Anna Braglia from Lugano and Renate and Friedrich Johenning from North Rhine-Westphalia, will now be shown until the autumn of 2020. The presentation is “an impressive pas de deux of the two collections”, as the Leopold Museum’s Director Hans-Peter Wipplinger summarized during the opening of the exhibition.

Hundertwasser – Schiele. Imagine Tomorrow

Conceived as a dialogue, the exhibition Hundertwasser – Schiele. Imagine Tomorrow juxtaposes eminent works by Friedensreich Hundertwasser with select examples from the oeuvre of Egon Schiele. Featuring 200 exhibits, the presentation explores the kinship of these two icons of Austrian art, thus showing them in a new, surprising light. While the two artists were unable to meet, they have a lot in common. Egon Schiele’s self-stagings as a prophet reverberated with Hundertwasser as much as his depictions of an ensouled nature. The critical self-questioning conducted by Schiele and the ideas espoused by Hundertwasser, who as a pioneer of the ecological movement and a designer of living spaces shaped 20th-century art beyond the borders of Austria, are highly topical in light of today’s global fight against the destruction of the environment as well as the strategies employed to overcome the crisis of the past months.

Special offers to mark reopening

On the occasion of its reopening, the Leopold Museum will give away some special offers: The first 100 visitors to arrive on 27th May will enter the museum free of charge and will be presented with a goody bag full of surprises. On 28th May, the first 100 people to purchase tickets online will receive 50% off the price of a regular ticket.

Pupils and apprentices under the age of 18 may visit the museum for free until 3rd September, provided they bring their own creations on the topic of “Hundertwasser. Man in Harmony with Nature” with them to the museum. Participants may be as creative as they like, and works of all media are welcome – whether they are paintings, drawings, collages or photographs. The teenagers’ works will be displayed at the museum’s Graphic Cabinet until the end of August.

The Leopold Museum’s art educators will be constantly available to visitors as “mobile info points”, as it were, providing information on the exhibitions.

Annual ticket holders will be granted a three-month extension of their yearly passes.

Security and hygiene measures

The hygiene measures adapted already prior to the general lockdown (more frequent cleaning intervals, availability of disinfectant dispensers) will be intensified. Museum goers will be afforded the required space of 10 m² per visitor. A safe distance of at least one meter between guests will be enforced with the help of a specially trained team of supervisors as well as through adaptations to the way visitors are guided through the exhibitions. The cash desks at the entrance and at the museum’s shop as well as the cloakroom will all be fitted with protective Perspex screens. The entire museum staff as well as visitors are required to wear a mouth-nose protection. Specially produced, branded face masks will be available at the Leopold Museum Shop. For more detailed information, please visit the Leopold Museum’s website.

Ticket sales, guided tours

Tickets will preferably be paid for by card, while we encourage the sale of online tickets. Guided tours for groups of up to ten people are possible once more and may be booked at kunstvermittlung@leopoldmuseum.org.

Opening times and admission fees

The Leopold Museum now has new opening times. From 27th May, the museum will be open from Wednesdays through to Sundays from 10 am to 6 pm. For now, the museum will no longer be open until 9 pm on Thursdays and will stay closed on Mondays and Tuesdays, with the exception of holidays, such as Pentecost Monday, when the museum will be open. The museum’s ticket prices remain the same.

Reopened exhibitions:

Vienna 1900. Birth of Modernism

On display since 16th March 2019, closed since Tuesday, 10th March 2020, reopened from Wednesday, 27th May 2020.

Hundertwasser-Schiele. Imagine Tomorrow

Originally intended to be shown from Friday, 21st February 2020 to Monday, 31st August 2020, the exhibition, closed since Tuesday, 10th March 2020, and reopened from Wednesday, 27th May 2020, will be extended. The exhibition’s new closing date will be communicated shortly.

German Expressionism. The Braglia and Johenning Collections

Originally intended to be shown from Friday, 15th November 2019 to Monday, 20th April 2020, the exhibition, closed since Tuesday, 10th March 2020, and reopened from Wednesday, 27th May 2020, will be extended until Monday, 31st August 2020.

The exhibitions Emil Pirchan. Universal Artist; Inspiration Beethoven. A Symphony in Pictures from Vienna 1900; The Body Electric. Erwin Osen and Egon Schiele; Monet, Van Gogh, Cézanne, Gauguin. The Emil Bührle Collection and Josef Pillhofer. Retrospective will not be cancelled but postponed. The exhibition dates for these presentations will be announced shortly.

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