ST. LEOPOLD’S DAY 2025 AT THE LEOPOLD MUSEUM

13.11.2025

Free enjoyment of art and culture for all the family on 15th november

This year, as in previous years, the Leopold Museum will once again honor its tradition of celebrating St. Leopold’s Day. On 15th November, the feast day of St. Leopold – who in 1663 was named  national patron saint of Austria “below and above the Enns” (today: Vienna as well as Lower and Upper Austria) –, the museum offers families free admission to enjoy an exciting and varied program.

“We are delighted that – for the fifth year running – we are inviting families, children and teenagers to spend St. Leopold’s Day surrounded by art and culture at the Leopold Museum. The free program includes hourly guided tours of the permanent presentation Vienna 1900. Birth of Modernism, as well as our LEO Kids Studio, which will be open all day to allow our young visitors, aged six to twelve, to follow in Egon Schiele’s footsteps. A particular highlight of the Vienna 1900 exhibition is a new acquisition which has recently joined the Leopold Museum’s collection: the 1903 painting Beech Forest by Ludwig Heinrich Jungnickel (1881–1965). The work, which could be acquired for the museum thanks to the generous support of a Viennese art patron, is the latest addition to the collection and is now on proud display at the Leopold Museum.”

Hans-Peter Wipplinger, Director of Leopold Museum

Art enthusiasts will be familiar with Ludwig Heinrich Jungnickel primarily as a “painter of animals”, an experimenter with printing techniques and designer of numerous decorative patterns for the Wiener Werkstätte. Most of his landscapes and allegorical paintings, too, reveal his penchant for expressive ornaments. His naturalistic depiction Beech Forest, boasting intense chiaroscuro, represents an exception in his oeuvre. The early masterpiece fits in seamlessly with the museum’s other landscape depictions from around 1900, in which Jungnickel’s contemporaries, including Gustav Klimt and Carl Moll, conveyed lyrical, almost other-worldly atmospheres.

Guided Family Tours of Vienna 1900 and LEO KIDS STUDIO on Schiele’s Cityscapes and Nature Depictions

The free guided tours offered to families on St. Leopold’s Day allow visitors to delve into the world of “Vienna around 1900”. At the LEO KIDS STUDIO, children and teenagers will discover the cityscapes and nature depictions of the eminent Austrian Expressionist Egon Schiele (1890–1918), who is among the most renowned artists in the world. The Leopold Museum is home to the world’s most comprehensive Schiele collection, which includes not only 45 paintings by the artist but also more than 200 works on paper, among them watercolors, drawings and printed graphic works. The exceptional artist’s biography links Vienna and Lower Austria. Born and raised in Tulln, Schiele lived in Vienna, Neulengbach and Klosterneuburg – the city whose abbey was founded by Leopold III (c. 1075–1136; since his canonization in 1485 St. Leopold), Margrave of Austria and member of the House of Babenberg.

THE PROGRAM ON ST. LEOPOLD’S DAY 2025:
GUIDED TOURS FOR ALL THE FAMILY

On the permanent exhibition:

• Vienna 1900. Birth of Modernism
  A Journey Back in Time to Around 1900!
  Get to know artists, designers and architects like Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Oskar Kokoschka, Koloman Moser, Josef Hoffmann and Otto Wagner, listen to exciting stories and discover the secrets of their art.
  Start: 10.30 am, 11.30 am, 12.30 pm, 1.30 pm, 2.30 pm and 3.30 pm
  Duration: 50 minutes each
  Language: German
  Admission: free of charge! Please register on site, at level 0 (Upper Atrium)

• Open LEO KIDS STUDIO
  “Houses, Cities and Sea”
  Egon Schiele is the Leopold Museum’s most important artist. We will look at his fascination with houses and cities. Old or new, freestanding or nestled in a row – which of his houses do you like best? Create your own houses and townscapes!
  For kids aged six to twelve
  Open: from 10 am to 5 pm
  Admission: free of charge! Please register on site, at level 1 (Hoffmann Lounge)

CURRENT EXHIBITIONS AT THE LEOPOLD MUSEUM

Permanent exhibition

• Vienna 1900. Birth of Modernism
  The permanent presentation Vienna 1900. Birth of Modernism illustrates this era’s enormous wealth of artistic and intellectual achievements. Based on the collection compiled by the museum’s founder Rudolf Leopold (1925-2010), and complemented by loans from private and institutional collections, the exhibition conveys the spirit of the world’s former cultural capital and its atmosphere characterized by contrasts. At the time of the fin-de-siècle, the Danube metropolis Vienna was a veritable hotbed of an incredibly fruitful intellectual life in the areas of the arts and sciences. The birth of Modernism occurred in the most diverse disciplines, from painting, literature and music, via theater, dance and architecture, all the way to medicine, psychology, philosophy, jurisprudence and economy. This unparalleled golden age was overshadowed by political and social power struggles which culminated in the end of the monarchy but brought forth the First Austrian Republic. The presentation covers the period from c. 1870 into the 1930s, focusing on Jugendstil, Expressionism and New Objectivity. It features works from the museum’s Egon Schiele collection, which is the most extensive and eminent in the world, masterpieces by Gustav Klimt, examples of works created by the Vienna Secession, select arts-and-crafts objects from the Wiener Werkstätte, the world’s largest compilation of works by Richard Gerstl, as well as the most comprehensive permanent museum presentations devoted to Oskar Kokoschka and Max Oppenheimer. The exhibition impresses with its great diversity of media, ranging from painting, graphic art, sculpture and photography, via glass, ceramics, metal, textiles, leather and jewelry, all the way to items of furniture and entire interior decorations.

Temporary exhibitions

• HIDDEN MODERNISM. THE FASCINATION WITH THE OCCULT AROUND 1900
  Around 1900, society in Europe was shaped by industrialization and rapid progress in many areas of technology and science. This acceleration of the pace of everyday life came up against the constraints of bourgeois existence. The era’s materialism and urbanization gave rise to a surge of reformist aspirations and the demand for radical change: youth and feminist movements, vegetarianism, nudism, novel dress concepts, new dance and gymnastics led to an altered physical awareness and attitude towards life. An ideal human existence was to be attained via exercise, asceticism and a theosophical understanding of spirituality. This new image of humanity was further fostered through spiritist séances. The occultist belief in invisible rays and an ethereal existence also touched many artists, who created works of psychological depth and visionary power. This other, hitherto largely hidden Modernism is explored for the first time in the art and culture-historical exhibition Hidden Modernism, featuring around 180 works by over 70 artists, among them Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach, Richard Gerstl, Gusto Gräser, Ferdinand Hodler, Hugo Höppener (Fidus), Johannes Itten, Wassily Kandinsky, Fernand Khnopff, Oskar Kokoschka, Erika Giovanna Klien, František Kupka, Koloman Moser, Edvard Munch, August Strindberg, Egon Schiele, Arnold Schönberg and My Ullmann.
• KOWANZ. ORTNER. SCHLEGEL
  The MQ Libelle on the roof of the Leopold Museum, which was inaugurated in 2020, provided the first architectural addition to the MuseumsQuartier (MQ) since its completion in 2001. The MQ Libelle and the adjoining terrace landscape represent a Gesamtkunstwerk, or universal work of art, created by the architects Laurids Ortner (*1941) and Manfred Ortner (*1943), and the artists Brigitte Kowanz (1957–2022) and Eva Schlegel (*1960). Ortner & Ortner designed the Leopold Museum, the Kunsthalle Wien as well as the Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien in the late 1990s. From the beginning, they pursued the vision of the MQ Libelle as a futurist platform hovering above the cultural area. Drawing from their urban utopias of the 1970s and 80s, they elaborated their vision in series of large-format chalk drawings, which are presented in this focus exhibition. The permanent art interventions created for the Libelle by Brigitte Kowanz (Light Circles) and Eva Schlegel (veiled) are reflected in the more recent, expansive installations Expo Line by Brigitte Kowanz, and Welle der Libelle by Eva Schlegel, shown for the first time in Austria in the Upper Atrium of the Leopold Museum.

 

OPENING TIMES:

On Saturday, 15th November 2025, the Leopold Museum offers free admission from 10 am to 6 pm to families, children and teenagers.

FREE ADMISSION:

For families: a maximum of two adults and up to three children / teenagers below the age of 19

Free admission for kids and teenagers below the age of 19: The offer is only valid on site! Free tickets are available exclusively at the museum’s cash desk, not online!

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