25 YEARS YOUNG: LEOPOLD MUSEUM HOSTS OPEN HOUSE DAY ON 20TH SEPTEMBER

10.09.2026

The museum of Viennese Modernism celebrates its unparalleled success story with a “day for everyone”, offering free admission, guided tours and workshops at the LEO Kids’ Studio

The 20th of September 2001, which 25 years ago fell on a Thursday, marked the much-awaited opening of the Leopold Museum where the extraordinary Leopold Collection has been presented to the public ever since. A quarter of a century and nine million visitors later, Hans-Peter Wipplinger, who became Director of the most-frequented art institution of the Vienna MuseumsQuartier (MQ) 11 years ago, along with the museum’s Managing Director Moritz Stipsicz, will host an open house day on 20th September 2026. On this “day for everyone”, from 10 am to 6 pm, the museum offers free admission to all visitors! Between 11 am and 4 pm, there will be free hourly highlight tours of the permanent presentation Vienna 1900. Birth of Modernism. Titled Life Stories & Favorite Works, the tour will shed light on various episodes from the life of the art collector Rudolf Leopold (1925-2010) and afford insights into the collection, the story of its creation and its masterpieces by artists including Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Oskar Kokoschka and many others.

The Leopold Museum and the Leopold Collection

The establishment of the Leopold Museum-Privatstiftung in 1994 secured the continued existence of the most important Austrian private collection of Viennese Modernism. Marking a special moment in Austrian art and cultural history, the collectors Rudolf and Elisabeth Leopold agreed with the Republic of Austria to preserve the collection and to build a museum for it. Financed by the Austrian federal state, the new construction – an impressive cube made from white shell limestone – was erected by the architects Laurids and Manfred Ortner in a central location as a main attraction in the inner courtyard of the MQ, the site of the former imperial stables built by Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach. Starting in the 1950s, the passionate collector Rudolf Leopold compiled more than 5,200 artworks over a period of only four decades and managed to build a unique collection of Viennese Modernism – the largest in terms of size and most eminent in terms of quality of any private Austrian compilation covering this period.

“In times of fleeting information and ephemeral visual stimuli, the Leopold Museum is all the more intent on providing a place where people can pause and observe with focused attention. It was the visionary collector Rudolf Leopold’s lifetime achievement that visitors who tour the museum are simultaneously able to embark on a sensual and intellectual journey of discovery, to perceive historical, socio-cultural and philosophical contexts and to gain multi-faceted access to the world through their personal experience of art. Therein lies the great potential of museum work for each individual as well as for society as a whole.”
Hans-Peter Wipplinger, Director of the Leopold Museum

The core of the collection is made up of works from Austrian Modernism. When selecting works of art, Rudolf Leopold focused on the period of Vienna around 1900 and on Austrian Expressionism. The museum’s permanent exhibition Vienna 1900. Birth of Modernism features the world’s most comprehensive presentations on the artists Gustav Klimt and Oskar Kokoschka. The Secession’s co-founder Klimt is represented at the Leopold Museum with 387 works, 25 of which are paintings. The artist’s most eminent paintings include the allegory Death and Life (1910/11, reworked in 1912/13 and 1915/16) as well as numerous landscapes depicting the Attersee region, among them the iconic painting, created in 1900, On Lake Attersee. Meanwhile, the Leopold Museum is home to the world’s most extensive permanent museum presentation of works by Kokoschka. Above all, the global renown of the Leopold Museum is founded on the fact that it houses the largest and most eminent Egon Schiele collection in the world – featuring some 300 works, 48 of them paintings –, as well the most extensive compilation of works by the Expressionist Richard Gerstl.

“With our permanent presentation Vienna 1900, we have managed to create a unique immersive experience which allows visitors to delve into the atmosphere of this vibrant time. Vienna around 1900 was characterized by the extreme contrasts of splendor and squalor, dream and reality, as well as Symbolism and self-questioning. In the emerging 20th century, Vienna served as a laboratory of ideas and as a central catalyst of a turbulent movement of renewal.”
Hans-Peter Wipplinger

What makes the Vienna 1900 presentation particularly special is that it not only features paintings and graphic works but also exquisite arts-and-crafts objects, for instance by the Wiener Werkstätte, as well as photographs, autographs, musical contributions, archival material and much more besides. It further shines a spotlight on 19th-century art, from the Biedermeier period to Atmospheric Impressionism, as Rudolf Leopold also collected works by artists from Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller to Emil Jakob Schindler, which are regularly exhibited in special presentations.

Extending the Collection

To date, the Leopold Museum’s collection has grown to include some 9,000 objects, while the museum is further home to numerous permanent loans. Extending the collection is among the museum’s most essential tasks. This is done in order to intensify the collection emphases beyond the compilation’s core holdings. Any additions are invariably chosen in keeping with the intentions of the collection’s founder Rudolf Leopold, and are aimed at fostering a deeper understanding of the collection. In recent years, the growth of the collection was expedited in various ways: through gifts of individual works made by art patrons, among them works by Gustav Klimt, Hans Makart, Paula Modersohn-Becker and Max Oppenheimer, as well as through acquisitions of entire collections and isolated works. The permanent presentation is enriched by these newly acquired objects and permanent loans. These include examples of avant-garde Modernism from all over the world, especially in the areas of Symbolism, Jugendstil and Expressionism, which allow the museum to place works of Austrian art into an international context.

Exhibitions from Klimt to Schiele, from Hodler to Hundertwasser

The more than 140 exhibitions shown to date at the Leopold Museum have all served to contextualize the works from the collection and to introduce large audiences to 19th-and 20th- century art. These have included monographic exhibitions, among them Klimt – Up Close and Personal (2012), Ferdinand Hodler. Elective Affinities from Klimt to Schiele (2017), Egon Schiele. The Jubilee Show (2018), Gustav Klimt. Artist of the Century (2018), Oskar Kokoschka. Expressionist, Migrant, European (2019), Richard Gerstl. Inspiration – Legacy (2019), Max Oppenheimer. Expressionist Pioneer and Gabriele Münter (2023/24), Changing Times. Egon Schiele’s Last Years (2025) and Gustave Courbet. Realist and Rebel (2026), as well as themed presentations, such as The Naked Truth. Klimt, Schiele, Kokoschka and Other Scandals (2005), nude men. from 1800 to the present (2012), Foreign Gods. Fascination Africa and Oceania (2016), Hagenbund. From Moderate to Radical Modernism (2023), Biedermeier. The Rise of an Era (2024), Splendor and Misery. New Objectivity in Germany (2024) and Hidden Modernism. The Fascination with the Occult Around 1900 (2025). Another focus is on the presentation of private and corporate collections. Since its inception, the Leopold Museum has showcased masterpieces from the Fondation Beyeler in the exhibition Cézanne – Picasso – Giacometti (2010), afforded first ever insights into the Heidi Horten Collection in the presentation WOW! (2019), presented The Schedlmayer Collection. A Discovery! (2021), as well as a cross-section of the Würth Collection in the exhibition AMAZING! (2023). Presentations of corporate collections have included that of the Vienna Insurance Group (Unknown Familiars, 2024) and, in the current exhibition Premiere! (2026), that of the Austrian National Bank. Furthermore, the Leopold Museum places a particular emphasis on sculptural art. The museum’s exhibition history includes numerous presentations dedicated to important sculptors, including Alberto Giacometti in the exhibition Modernist Pioneer (2014), Wilhelm Lehmbruck (2016), whose work was shown in a large-scale retrospective, Joannis Avramidis, as well as the Austrian sculptor Josef Pillhofer In a Dialogue with Cézanne, Giacometti, Picasso, Rodin ... (2021). The museum has also presented exciting dialogue exhibitions, among them Hilarious! Hilarious?, dedicated to Carl Spitzweg and Erwin Wurm (2017), Imagine Tomorrow on Friedensreich Hundertwasser and Egon Schiele (2020), and, currently, the exhibition Figural Archetypes which highlights the parallels between the oeuvres of Herbert Boeckl and Hans Josephsohn. Additionally, the museum has given a platform to photography, with exhibitions devoted to Madame d’Ora and Moriz Nähr (2018), to the theme of The Replicating Business (2022), and to Austrian and German photography of the 1920s and 30s in the upcoming exhibition New. Objective set to open in late autumn. Works by contemporary artists have featured either in exhibitions dedicated especially to them, or as contextual additions to presentations (Tracey Emin – Egon Schiele, Berlinde de Bruyckere. Suture, Schiele – Brus – Palme, Yan Pei-Ming, etc.). Comprehensive presentations of the Leopold Collection outside of Austria have been held in Europe, for instance in Athens, Milan and Budapest, and, most recently, in East Asia, in Japan and Korea. Next year, 100 exhibits from the collection will be shown for the first time in Italy’s capital Rome.

Publication on the Leopold Museum’s 25-Year Anniversary

Marking its 25-year anniversary, the Leopold Museum has issued a publication in German and English: Leopold Museum. 2001–2026, edited by Hans-Peter Wipplinger, with contributions by Stefan Kutzenberger, Alexandra Matzner, Lena Scholz and Hans-Peter Wipplinger, available for EUR 19.90 at the Leopold Museum Shop.

25 YEARS. A DAY FOR EVERYONE
OPEN HOUSE DAY AT THE LEOPOLD MUSEUM
20TH SEPTEMBER 2026, 10 am – 6 pm

Discover. Marvel. Create
A day for all the family
Free admission, free guided tours & access to the LEO Kids’ Studio

Ornament Workshop
Workshops at the LEO Kids’ Studio
For children aged 6 to 12 and their accompanying adults
1 pm to 5 pm
Registration on site. Studio visit without guided tour

Life Stories & Favorite Works [in German]
Guided tour of the highlights of the permanent presentation Vienna 1900. Birth of Modernism
Start: hourly from 11 am to 4 pm
Registration on site. Duration: 50 mins. per tour.

Link to the Webpage 25 Years of the Leopold Museum

The Full Program of “25 Years of the Leopold Museum. A Day for Everyone”

Current Exhibitions at the Leopold Museum:

Vienna 1900. Birth of Modernism (permanent presentation)
A Summer with Klimt (shown as part of Vienna 1900)
Masterpieces of Viennese Modernism by Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele and Richard Gerstl from the Stiftung Sammlung Kamm in Zug, Switzerland
Herbert Boeckl / Hans Josephsohn. Figural Archetypes (until 10 Jan. 27)
Premiere! The Collection of the Oesterreichische Nationalbank (until 11 Oct. 26)

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