Featured Events in Vienna in October, 2025 (August Updated)

In ihrer rohen, wilden Form und dennoch als Teufel erkennbar, nehmen Sarah Ortmeyers Skulpturen DIABOLUS (PROTECTOR) den Carlone-Saal und das Belvedere ein. Inmitten der epochenübergreifenden Sammlung werden diese wesenhaften Schutzteufel zu zeitlosen und weltumspannenden Schatten im Widerstand gegen das Generische.

Breathing, inflating and deflating bodily organs made of light balloon silk rear up and collapse shortly thereafter in a regular rhythm. The large-scale installation Gonflés – dégonflés by French artist Annette Messager takes up the phallic thrust of Franz West’s Sexuality Symbol and contrasts starkly with Kennedy Yanko’s tripartite sculpture made of heavy recycled metal, whose elegant and colorful skins exude a downright painterly quality. This new presentation on the second upper level of Albertina Klosterneuburg maximizes the effect of the prizewinning architecture of Heinz Tesar, with its theme of a wave on the Danube reflected in the abstract undulating lines of works by figures ranging from Hubert Scheibl to Albert Oehlen and on to young shooting stars like British artist Jade Fadojutimi and Chinese artist Xiyao Wang. The overarching motto at Albertina Klosterneuburg in 2025 is De Sculptura.This year’s presentation explores sculpture’s significance as a theme in present-day art and to the museum itself: De Sculptura provides an impression of output by established and younger Austrian and international artists from the ALBERTINA Museum’s collection of contemporary art, which is currently diversifying in terms of featured media with innovative new emphases.

From Sonia Delaunay to Tamara de Lempicka, modern female artists from more than 20 countries gathered together. In their works, let us work with these great female perspectives to capture the changes of the times and unfold a new narrative across artistic practices.

In its 29th edition, the special presentation Point of View, which regularly presents different artworks temporarily in the permanent exhibition of the Picture Gallery of the Kunsthistorische Museum, focuses on a masterful portrait of the nine-month-old Princess Maria Teresa of Naples and Sicily, allowing visitors to explore the work of the court painters Anton Raphael Mengs and Diego Velázquez. In 1770, Anton Raphael Mengs (1728–1779), the celebrated court painter to King Charles III of Spain, returned to Italy to relax and at the same time to create portraits on behalf of his employer: in Naples he was to portray, among others, the family of King Ferdinand IV and his wife Maria Carolina of Austria. A highlight of this work can be seen as the now freshly restored portrait of Marie-Therese of Bourbon-Sicily, which shows the royal couple's first-born daughter. The portrait of the approximately nine-month-old princess impresses with its artistic sophistication. With it, Mengs created a work that combines traditional representation with a new naturalness and liveliness. The picture thus reflects a changed conception of childhood that became widespread in the 18th century - influenced by the educational ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, which Maria Carolina particularly valued.

The aim of the exhibition is to emphasize the role of the medal as an object of art. Moreover, it will illuminate how the role of artists developed from the universal genius of the Renaissance and early Baroque to specialists for separate genres of the arts during the later years of the monarchy. The exhibition Imperial Impressions is dedicated to artists who were active at Habsburg courts and residences. It focuses on masters who were at ease in several genres of the arts, such as architecture, painting, and sculpture. It is the fact that they also made medals that warranted their inclusion in this exhibition, however. As the objects on display were mostly produced for members of the imperial family, they were of the highest quality. The period of the presented artists ranges from around 1500 to the end of the monarchy in 1918. The exhibition will show significant medals and provide in-depth context. The presentation of renowned works together with exceptional works from the field of medal-making art introduces visitors to a new, unusual viewpoint at familiar objects from the collection. The exhibition comprises about eighty works: medals, coins, paintings, gemstones, ivory and goldsmithery. Most object stem from the museum’s own collection, complemented by loans from the Numismatic Collection at the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin and from the Tyrolean Landesmuseen.

I have often called my pictures "painted music". Or I have spoken of "making music with colours and forms". (Arnold Schönberg, 1930) In addition to a large selection of paintings and drawings, the extensive show presents music autographs, writings, letters, photographs, catalogues and ephemera from the archive that contextualise Schönberg's years of painting. Contemporaries from the visual arts enter into a written dialogue with the painting composer. Digitally animated scores, film clips and voices from the past take you into a world that only seems to have disappeared.

In 1917, the last year of his career, Gustav Klimt started working on one of his largest paintings, the allegorical work The Bride. His unexpected and premature death in February 1918 prevented him from finishing this painting. A now iconic image by Klimt’s favorite photographer Moriz Nähr shows The Bride together with Lady with Fan—itself the subject of an exhibition at the Upper Belvedere in 2021/22—in the painter’s studio in Vienna’s Hietzing district.

The redesigned Hall 16 focuses on the Ice Age and the life of children during this fascinating period of Earth’s history. The Ice Age is fascinating: it evokes thoughts of iconic Ice Age animals such as mammoths, giant deer, and cave bears, but also of man-made works of art such as the cave paintings in Spain and France or the Venus of Willendorf. The Ice Age is usually portrayed as a world of adults. In the exhibition “Ice Age Children and their World”, the usual perspective is reversed and the subject of the Ice Age is linked to the experience of children!

The exhibition not only shows the history of STIs, but also refers to current topics such as AIDS therapy and HPV vaccination, the first “vaccination against cancer”. Different clinical pictures are shown and explained using historical specimens. As many STIs are now easily treatable, a special focus is placed on education and prevention - according to the motto: treatment is good, prevention is better. As sexually transmitted infections have social consequences beside physical symptoms, this topic is also covered. Stigmatization and exclusion should not really play a role in diseases today, yet those affected are still discriminated against in the 21st century. STIs can affect anyone, regardless of age, gender, sexual orientation, and socio-economic status. Knowledge about STIs not only useful to you, but also to others.

From 17 June 2025, the Kunsthistorisches Museum, in cooperation with the Kaiserschild-Stiftung, will present a special exhibition on the Dutch Baroque painter Pieter Claesz (1597/98–1660) as part of the Kaiserschild Art Defined project. Claesz is considered one of the most important still life painters of the seventeenth century. In collaboration with the Alte Galerie of the Universalmuseum Joanneum Graz and the Kunst Museum Winterthur, three atmospherically rich still life paintings by Pieter Claesz will be on display, showcasing his masterful use of light and his refined handling of materiality. The presentation is complemented by high-resolution digital reproductions that invite interactive engagement with the artworks. Visitors can explore intricate details and delve deeper into the Baroque visual language of the so-called Golden Age.

Radical! encourages visitors to think differently about Modernism—to see it as multivoiced, international, and contradictory. It launches a dialogue between over sixty women*artists from more than twenty countries, presenting paintings alongside textile designs, sculptures, prints, drawings, photographs, and films. Regardless of their background or visual language, these artists are united by their search for new forms of expression and representation, as well as their determination to redefine artistic and social boundaries.

Radical! encourages visitors to think differently about Modernism—to see it as multivoiced, international, and contradictory. It launches a dialogue between over sixty women*artists from more than twenty countries, presenting paintings alongside textile designs, sculptures, prints, drawings, photographs, and films. Regardless of their background or visual language, these artists are united by their search for new forms of expression and representation, as well as their determination to redefine artistic and social boundaries.

“Freighted” is the title of the exhibition, which was designed by South African artist Fritha Langerman and sent on tour around the world. The transport crates that dominate the exhibition space become a symbol of the fate of the rhinos, which were shipped to Europe as exotic animals from their original habitats in Africa or Asia. “Freighted” is illuminated from many different angles in this exhibition. On the one hand, it is about our view of the exotic, the foreign, which manifests itself in the rhinoceros and its depictions. It is also about the history of collecting and our self-image with regard to researching and exhibiting dead animals. But it is as well about our empathy towards rhinos, which have been torn from their natural habitat and social environment by humans and taken to alien lands. The texts and film sequences in the boxes address our view of the world and the relationship between humans and animals, which is in an existential crisis. This exhibition is intended to help us reflect on our approach to and treatment of popular but endangered animal species. It is enriched by specific topics that we are engaged with at the NHM Vienna, such as nature conservation research and initiatives against wildlife crime. Let the exhibition inspire you and give you food for thought. Risk a look beyond the exotic, scientific, and colonial attributions of rhinos to their role as fascinating but highly endangered fellow creatures on our common Earth.

Jitka Hanzlová (*1958) is one of the leading contemporary photographers. The ALBERTINA Museum presents the internationally renowned artist's first museum exhibition in Austria and brings together ten of her most important series. Homeland, loss, exile and identity are central themes in Hanzlová's work. The artist fled from the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic to West Germany in 1982, where she later studied visual communication with a focus on photography in the city of Essen. It was only after the opening of the Iron Curtain that she returned to the region of her origin again and again for artistic projects from 1989 onwards. Hanzlová's first series Rokytník (1990-1994) shows in subtle colors the everyday life of the inhabitants of her eponymous home village, which is familiar to her and from which she has nevertheless distanced herself during her years in exile. For the atmospheric images of Forest (2000-2005), she photographed the forest of her childhood near the Carpathian Mountains and reflects its organic stillness as a subjective experience. This contrasts with impressive portrait series taken in international cities: Bewohner (1994-1996), Female (1997-2000) or Brixton (2002) examine identity through the relationship between the individual and the urban environment. In later series, Hanzlová increasingly deals with ecological issues. These highly precise and formally stringent photographs also revolve around questions of human existence in a constantly changing environment. The exhibition is on view from 11 July until 26 October 2025.

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Fritz Wotruba's death (1907–75), Belvedere 21 is presenting a comprehensive exhibition of this important Austrian sculptor. While Wotruba's work has primarily been viewed in monographs or in terms of his influence on subsequent generations, this presentation focuses on his international exhibition activities, his network, and the broad reception of his sculptures.

The question, »What is light?« stands at the center of Brigitte Kowanz’ oeuvre. Her answer is: »Light is what we see«—an allusion to the paradoxical fact that light makes everything visible but itself normally remains invisible. The eponymous retrospective at the ALBERTINA guides viewers through works created by this important artist since the 1980s. Light, characterized by ephemerality, boundlessness, and immateriality, plays a leading role in this exhibition. Her light-based artworks, shown in custom-created mirrored spaces, are reflected an infinite number of times or made visible to begin with through the employment of black lights.

The special presentation Vitrine EXTRA periodically showcases various antique objects as temporary additions to the permanent exhibition of the Collection of Greek and Roman Antiquitiesarrow_outward at the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna. In its seventh edition, the show focuses on short messages from antiquity. When we think of antique inscriptions, we usually expect large stone tablets with chiselled lettering. But there are many other things which at first glance are perhaps inconspicuous or invisible; and sometimes, you might even have to turn an object upside down to see them: Greek vases for example, tell a host of exciting stories using delicate sgraffito techniques and vibrant paintwork.

The conventional idea of modernism is as a fundamental break with tradition. It is thus that little attention has been paid to the way in which deliberate recourse to the distant past of the Late Middle Ages played a central role in precisely that reinvention of art that took place around 1900. This exhibition shines a spotlight on a development that took place between 1870 and 1920 in which numerous artists such as Edvard Munch, Vincent van Gogh, Käthe Kollwitz, Max Beckmann, and Otto Dix deliberately referred back to the expressive art of figures such as Holbein, Dürer, Cranach, and Baldung Grien. Encounters with medieval aesthetics elicited intense emotions and afforded artists new ways of engaging with the fundamental questions of human existence. This ALBERTINA exhibition inimitably unites modernist masterpieces with those of the 15th and early 16th centuries.

The Kunsthistorisches Museum is dedicating its fall exhibition 2025 to Michaelina Wautier, who is regarded as one of the foremost female artists of the seventeenth century. The exhibition offers visitors the opportunity to discover almost the entire oeuvre of this outstanding artist alongside works by contemporaries such as Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyck.

Lisette Model (1901–1903), born into a Viennese Jewish family, is regarded as one of the 20th century’s most influential photographers. This ALBERTINA exhibition presents a broad retrospective covering her most important groups of works created between 1933 and 1957. Alongside iconic photographs such as Coney Island Bather and Café Metropole, the selection will also include seldom-seen works. Model, following her emigration to New York in 1938, quickly rose to prominence with her pictures for magazines such as Harper’s Bazaar showing facets of urban life: the poverty of the Lower East Side, the upper class at their leisure pursuits, and night life at bars and jazz clubs. Model went on to become an influential teacher during the McCarthy Era. The exhibition features the first-ever public presentation of the original draft of her 1979 monograph, a classic of photo book history.