Vienna Albertina Celebrates its 20th Anniversary
In 2023, the Albertina museum celebrates its reopening 20 years ago, the renovation of the state rooms and the expansion of the museum from 2,000 to over 28,000 square meters today. With between 700,000 and one million tickets sold a year, the Albertina has been repositioned into a new museum rich in tradition.
This year the Albertina museum celebrates its reopening 20 years ago. / Picture: © Wikimedia Commons / Hannes Sallmutter [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)]
No museum in the world has shown more drawings and prints as well as exhibitions on graphic artists in these two decades than the Albertina Museum. The year is therefore dedicated to the Graphic Collection with six exhibitions.
- 50th anniversary of the death of Pablo Picasso
Three further exhibitions are devoted to focal points of the Albertina: on the 50th anniversary of the death of Pablo Picasso, who died in 1973, the Albertina is showing 70 works from its Picasso holdings: 18 paintings and over 50 drawings and prints, as well as around 20 unique ceramic pieces.
- 95th birthday of Alex Katz
In spring, the Albertina celebrates the 95th birthday of Alex Katz, who is currently having a major retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, having been shown immediately before, at the Thyssen Museum in Madrid.
- 75th birthday of Gottfried Helnwein
Gottfried Helnwein is also celebrating his 75th birthday, which Albertina is marking with a major exhibition of his works from the last three decades.
Albertina and other exhibitions in 2023
The Albertina also offers many other exhibitions, from Michelangelo to Baselitz, among others.
The exhibition 'Georg Baselitz. 100 Drawings' is based on a generous donation of 100 of his outstanding and trend-setting drawings to the Albertina and the Morgan Library in New York, from which the two museums were each allowed to choose 50 for their collections.
One of Israel's most important artists and sculptors, Ofer Lellouche, will show his examination of the existence of man in times of his impending annihilation in a personal exhibition at Albertina beginning in late June. Also in the summer, there will be a large retrospective of the most important living contemporary artist from Austria, VALIE EXPORT.
In the fall, the success of a major donation is again the subject of an exhibition: the Photo Collection was able to acquire over 300 large photographs by Joel Sternfeld, the first part of which will be shown in a retrospective.
'Michelangelo and the Consequences' focus on the canon of the male nude as shaped by Michelangelo in the early 16th century. For four centuries Michelangelo's canon is the model that no one can pass by. Be it to be slavishly imitated or, as in the case of Rembrandt, to be thrown over.
At the same time, the Albertina Modern will host an exhibition under the sign of diversity, dedicated to the expansion of the existing collection activity of the last centuries.
The entire famous holdings of the Albertina from Dürer and Michelangelo, Leonardo and Raphael, Bruegel, Rembrandt, Rubens to Klimt, Schiele, Kokoschka or Warhol, Baselitz and Kiefer are essentially male and white. In the last two decades, not only the exhibition focus but even more the collection focus has been put on a broad basis by specifically collecting diverse artists.
This fall, for example, 'Diversity in Sex, Race and Gender' will be on view at the Albertina Modern, a comprehensive show that makes the question of identity as well as media diversity the subject of the exhibition.
Another highlight at Albertina Modern is the large retrospective of Yoshitomo Nara (10.5. to 1.11.), who with the Angry Girl created a symbolic figure for rebellion and criticism of conventions.