Museums of Diversity
Art touches everybody – in many different ways. Experiencing them together is the aim of our museums.
Museums of Diversity
Art touches everybody – in many different ways. Experiencing them together is the aim of our museums.
On view
Queering the KHM
A project of the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna in cooperation with the Kunsthistorisches Museum
“Queering the KHM means taking a different, diverse, and – above all – non-heteronormative look at the artworks of Kunsthistorisches Museum, at the history of the museum, its collections and structures. It means questioning a traditional order and the ‘operating system’ of art, including the people involved.”
- Elisabeth Priedl, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna
Throwback
Queer Interventions & Performances
9 June to 3 July 2022 at the Kunsthistorisches Museum
In the course of a cooperation with the Academy of Fine Arts, students and graduates of the Contextual Painting class under the direction of Ashley Hans Scheirl were invited to highlight the queer and intersectional diversity of the Kunsthistorisches Museum. As part of the project Queering the KHM, the artists translated queerness into various art forms and visual practices in their works.
Most of the works emerged from an explicit engagement with artworks from the museum’s collections, with the aim of opening up new spaces through performative interventions, pictoral-installative tableaux vivants and queer interpretations of classics from art history: trans-spaces.
The Kunsthistorisches Museum took the Pride Month June 2022 as an opportunity to present the results of the cooperation with the Academy of Fine Arts. From 9 June to 3 July, works by artists on the theme of Queering the KHM were on display in the museum and performances took place on several evenings.
You can find more information about the artists and their work by clicking on the individual images and all events related to the Queering the KHM project in the calendar.
Issues
Sexual Diversity & Identity
Love and sexual attraction are popular subjects in art. The collections of our museums offer different perspectives on desire, love and identity. Same-sex and gender-neutral love has always existed, and this is reflected in artefacts that offer insights into the lives and experiences of members of the LGBTQI* community from all over the world.
Sexual diversity is a seminal aspect of human existence.
Inclusive offers
A principal concern of the museums comprising the KHM-Museumsverband has always been to ensure that as many visitors as possible can access and enjoy our rich collections. In addition to weekly inclusive tours organized as part of our Barriere*FREI*Tage, touch tours, (interactive) tactile reliefs, and audio description tours, visitors can enjoy self-led tours and experience the collection at their own pace, alone or in a group, regardless of their physical or cognitive impairments. We continue to expand accessibility at the museum and to evaluate and improve it through a dialogue with people with disabilities.
Art touches everybody – in many different ways.
Generational Diversity
In earlier centuries, the various phases of life were regarded differently: children were treated like small adults, and only very few people lived to a ripe old age. The tour Young and Old takes you on as journey through the Picture Gallery and the Kunstkammer Vienna and explores how the different stages of life are depicted in art. Our Open Workshop for Young and Old invites adults and children to experience art in a playful way. Discover our generation-spanning offers!
Explore how the different stages of life are depicted in art.
Gender
The collections housed in our museums reflect several millennia of human history. Most of the stories behind the artworks comprise heteronormative narratives. This is exactly why we want to question and critique these narratives in order to open up novel, until-now neglected viewpoints.
Art is informed by societal and individual concepts of gender roles – and vice versa.
Ethnicity & Nationality
By exploring both cultural diversity and what people all over the world have in common, the Weltmuseum Wien contributes to our understanding of an increasingly diverse world. The museum uses its extensive collections to embed societal changes and developments in today’s context, and to critically question the colonial heritage.
Our examination of both cultural differences and what we all have in common is an important contribution to a multi-cultural world.
Watch from home
How queer was the Renaissance?
German language lecture on queer gender concepts in Renaissance Art
The Italian Renaissance is regarded not only as a period in which the “modern” individuum established itself but also as a time in which novel concepts of androgyny were developed. Countless artworks bear witness to this „convergence of the sexes” through a conflation of body ideal and role-conforming behaviour. In this lecture from 2019, Elisabeth Priedl explores the question: How queer was the Renaissance?
KHM Stories App Tours
Change of Perspective – How diverse is the museum?
Download now for free!
The collections of the Kunsthistorisches Museum contain works made of a wide variety of materials and from many different periods, but what about the representation of human diversity? It's high time to take a closer look and look beneath the shiny surface of imperial splendor: Get active yourself by finding alternatives to discriminatory language, rediscovering forgotten female artists, or going in search of commonalities between different cultures. Join us, because diverse visitors are the prerequisite for a diverse museum!
Change of Perspective – How diverse is the museum?
Download now for free!
The collections of the Kunsthistorisches Museum contain works made of a wide variety of materials and from many different periods, but what about the representation of human diversity? It's high time to take a closer look and look beneath the shiny surface of imperial splendor: Get active yourself by finding alternatives to discriminatory language, rediscovering forgotten female artists, or going in search of commonalities between different cultures. Join us, because diverse visitors are the prerequisite for a diverse museum!
Totally Caring? Of Luxury and Poverty in Art
This tour explores societal dependencies, migration movements, parental worries about their children’s career choices, and how these things informed art produced in earlier centuries. Visitors can follow the often-difficult life of a peasant family, learn about “men’s work” or meet an upper-class fashion victim. The tour offers fascinating insights into social and economic phenomena that have lost none of their relevance.
Workshops
I am, but I am also – A look behind cliches and preconceptions
A workshop for teenagers aged between 14 and 19
Judging others, pigeonholing them, and using cliches - who hasn’t done that? The collections of the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna, too, bear witness to various preconceptions and discriminations. Whose work is displayed in the museum and whose is not? Which artworks depict preconceptions?
We’ll tour the galleries to take a critical look and ask these and other important questions. And we’ll also look at ourselves, and examine differences and similarities between then and now.
In the workshop we’ll work in small groups and try to transpose impressions and ideas from the tour into collages.
Duration: c. 90 minutes
Costs: groups of 13 or less pay a fixed rate of € 58,80, from 14 persons € 4,50,- per pupil
Booking via kunstvermittlung@khm.at
Book a tour
Of Gods and Goddesses
Guided tour
Representations of gods are found as figures, graphic characters, or on paintings all over the world. Weltmuseum Wien features figures of the goddess of maize from Mesoamerica, painted Tibetan mountain gods, and Arabic letters telling us the names of Allah. Take part in this guided tour and discover the many different images of god.
Guided tour through the permanent collection of the Weltmuseum Wien
Duration: 45 min.
Bookings via kulturvermittlung@weltmuseumwien.at
Young and Old
Guided tour
We were all young once, and we’re all growing older at the same speed. But earlier centuries regarded the different stages of life differently: children were treated like small adults, and only very few people reached a ripe old age. Join us to explore how the different stages of life are depicted in art.
Private tour in the Picture Gallery or the Kunstkammer of Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien
Duration: 60 min.
Female artists and superwomen
Women for many centuries were disadvantaged in society. This is why there are, as far as we know, works by only ten women among the circa 660 painters in the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna. This makes their paintings and the reasons why they became famous especially fascinating. In addition, we look at some of the strong women depicted in our artworks.
Guided tour in the Picture Gallery of Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien
Duration: 60 min.
Who are the Female Collectors in our Galleries?
Führung
Up until the twentieth century, it was mostly men who conducted research and collected artefacts. In doing so, they determined which objects were included in ethnographic collections and which stories they told. But who were the women involved in collecting? What drove them to collect, and what kind of objects did they choose? On this themed tour, we examine the experiences, interests, and stories of the women in the display collection!
Guided tour in the permanent collection of the Weltmuseum Wien
Duration: 60 min.
Bookings via kulturvermittlung@weltmuseumwien.at
Museum to touch
Every first Friday of the month in the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna
In the course of the touch tour, we work intensively together on individual works of art: detailed descriptions of pictures and tactile materials arouse different sensual impressions that stimulate and support the imagination.
Daughter, Mother, Queen
The Role of Women in Ancient Egypt
We’ll take a journey into the past and look at the every-day lives of women in ancient Egypt – their responsibilities, opportunities and doings. Daughter, wife, businesswoman or even Pharaoh? Anything was possible in Ancient Egypt! A woman’s role in religious, political and presumably also private life was highly diverse.
Private tour in the Ancient Egyptian and Near Eastern Collection of the Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien
Duration: 60 min.
Desire, Lust and Fertility
What did mothers’ milk and tobacco seeds contribute to the creation of the world? Why did martial Samurai don women’s clothes? And why did Ethiopians wear a phallus on their head? Hear about boozy and fun stories on eroticism, fertility and sexuality, gender roles and their mutability with the help of surprising artefacts from our permanent collection.
Guided tour in the permanent collection of the Weltmuseum Wien
Duration: 45 min.
Bookings via kulturvermittlung@weltmuseumwien.at
What Gender is Art?
Why are there so few paintings by women in most museums? Why were there so few female artists in the past? Was it actually possible for women to become painters? And what role do women play in the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna? Together, we’ll look for answers!
Guided tour for school groups at the Picture Gallery of the Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien
Duration: 60/90 min. | for 15-19 year olds
We will get to know female artists from the museum's collection and have exciting encounters with women and their various roles as models, professional painters or family members on our tour through the painting gallery. But the men will not be neglected either! In our gallery we will encounter impressive works by male and female artists, which we will discover and question in groups. In the end, we will certainly all have our own opinion on the question: What gender does art have?
Typically female? Typically male?
Gender roles in art
Societal and individual concepts of gender roles inform art – and vice versa. On this tour you decide if you want to focus on femininity, masculinity or both. We compare societal ideals and learn about exceptions to the rule.
Guided tour in the Picture Gallery of the Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien
Duration: 60 min.
Discover our museums with all senses
Kunsthistorisches Museum
Exhibition visit
Barrier – free access at the side entrance of the Museum (Burgring 5)
KHM visitor service escorts visitors to elevator and inside the Museum
Toilets
5 barrier – free restrooms (souterrain, raised ground floor, 1. floor)
Café in the cupola hall
The café in the cupola hall is accessible by elevator without steps.
Wheelchair rental
Wheelchairs are available free of charge. (Please reserve one day in advance at guestservice@khm.at)
Wheelchair users visiting the museum via Burgring 5 can buy their ticket at the shop in the vestibule.
Parking
5 public handicapped parking spaces at the Heldenplatz
2 public handicapped parking spaces at the side entrance of the Museum, Burgring 5 (Monday to Friday)
Theatermuseum
Exhibition visit
The main entrance is accessible without steps (door width 120 cm, after the vestibule another double swing door 120 cm wide).
Intercom system at main gate (porter or cashier).
Visitor service leads to the lift to the 1st floor if required (door width 130 cm, cabin depth 150 cm, cabin width 130 cm).
Exhibition area 1st floor includes small ramps (3-5cm).
Exhibition area ground floor is accessible via an approx. 15 cm step (visitor service will put up the ramp if required).
Toilets
Barrier-free restrooms are available on the ground floor.
Wheelchari rental
Wheelchairs available upon prior notification (minimum 2 days ahead of your visit).
Assistance animals
Access with guide dogs possible (please notify ticket box in advance, T +43 1 52524-2729)
Weltmuseum Wien
Exhibition visit
The main entrance of the Museum is accessible without steps by using the platform lift. The special exhibition area on the Ground Floor and the galleries of the permanent exhibition on the Mezzanine Floor are also accessible without steps via lift.
Guided tours
Due to the current regulations to contain the pandemic there is no programme for inclusive tours at the moment. We kindly ask for your understanding and hope to welcome you again soon on our inclusive guided tours.
Events
The event area is also barrier-free. Please inform us and our visitor service will accompany you to the event area (contact via intercom terminal at the entrance to the WMW Forum and at the Ticket Office).
Café & Family Corner
Both the cook café & bistro and the Family Corner in the Hall of Columns are fully accessible via lift.
Toilets
There are accessible toilets next to the cook café & bistro on the Ground Floor, at the entrance to the gallery In the Shadow of Colonialism on the Mezzanine Floor, and in the event area.
Further locations
Imperial Treasury (Schweizertrakt / Hofburg palace)
Main entrance has no steps, width of door 200cm, double-swinging doors, followed by a ramp leading to the ticket office.
Galleries are accessible via stairs or elevator.
Elevator (width of doors 80 cm, cabin 140 x 120cm)
Bathrooms are suitable for visitors with mobility impairments located near shop/ticket office.
Wheelchairs are available free of charge (please reserve a day in advance).
Public parking spaces reserved for disabled drivers on Heldenplatz
Imperial carrigage museum (Schönbrunn palace)
Main entrance has a small step (c. 3 cm), double-swinging doors (width of each door 68 cm)
Entrance to the collection: double-swinging doors, total width 130 cm
Ground Floor Galleries are totally accessible for visitors with mobility impairments.
First Floor Galleries are accessible via stairs (width 128 cm, 12 steps, landing, then 155 cm, 10 steps, handrail on both sides of staircase at 100 cm)
Bathrooms located outside the Collection of Historical Carriages; at present, not suitable for visitors with mobility impairments.
Touching
Touching History
in Hofburg Palace
Located between the Weltmuseum Wien and the Austrian National Library, the Hofburg Info Centre invites you to take a journey through history. The tactile reliefs make this an unforgettable visit for visually-impaired visitors too.
Opening hours: Thursdays to Tuesdays, 10 am to 6 pm
Hearing
An Audio Descriptive Tour (in German)
This audio descriptive tour of the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna helps visually-impaired visitors to find their way round the museum.
An Earful of Art
Go on a fascinating journey of discovery through the world of art with your ears. Wherever and whenever you want to! Our podcasts carry you off into fascinating worlds and offer additional information on our special exhibitions.
- Museum of Dreams - a literary museum guide for the Kunsthistorisches Museum
- Special exhibition Beethoven moves
- Special exhibiton Admired ... desired ... at the Theatermuseum
Seeing
German Sign Language Tours
The Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien has always been keen to offer its rich collections to all visitors in the spirit of inclusion. Whether visually or cognitively impaired, the shared contemplation of art and the opportunity to be creative in the studio open up new perspectives and awaken emotions.
Bright Hours
Between 3pm and 6pm every first Saturday of the month, we turn up the lights in the galleries of the Weltmuseum Wien for Helle Stunden (bright hours). Before 3pm visitors can experience the galleries in normal (subdued) lighting, but between 3pm and 6pm they can discover and enjoy a much brighter ambience. This new light setting was specially developed for visually-impaired museum visitors in collaboration for the Hilfsgemeinschaft der Blinden und Seeschwachen in Österreich (Austrian Society for the Blind and Visually Impaired).
inVISIBLE
inVISIBLE was developed for both blind and seeing visitors. The sense of touch helps our orientation. This book uses this to reveal a different approach to paintings in general and to (male and female) artists in particular, some of the latter appear to be almost invisible in art history. Rotraut Krall from the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna supports inVISIBLE with her experience as an art historian and expert on art education for the blind and visually impaired.
For the book we chose works by Sofonisba Anguissola, Rachel Ruysch, Maria van Oosterwijck, Rosalba Carriera and Marie Louise Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun from the Picture Gallery of the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna. Sarah Iris Mang produced tactile drawings that seem to enter into a dialogue with the paintings.
Events for every age
Celebrate your birthday!
Celebrate your birthday in Egypt, or travel round the world! Or would you prefer to slay terribly beautiful monsters? The birthday girl/boy can choose!
Celebrate your birthday in the …
Coming of Age
Special tour at Weltmuseum Wien
Are you already an adult? If so, how did you notice or who decided that? In some parts of the world, the transition from being a child to being an adult is clear and sometimes painful. Learn more about different rituals that mark and accompany this transition.
Bookings via kulturvermittlung@weltmuseumwien.at
Party at the museum
Once a month, we transform the cupola hall of our museum into a spectacular cocktail bar - with magnificent sounds, fine drinks and exciting tours through the permanent exhibition as well as the special exhibitions. The DJs from RADIO RUDINA will set the mood and our bartenders have once again created a special #Kunstschatzi cocktail. From 7.30 pm to 10 pm, guided tours will start every half hour and full hour, each of which will focus on the theme of the evening.
We always publish the upcoming dates on our Facebook page.
Marry me!
Tie the knot in the spectacular setting of one of our museums. Surprise your guests after the ceremony at the registry office with a guided tour of the collections of the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna, one of the greatest in the world, or an agape in a sumptuous setting.
Contact:
Tina Madl
T +43 1 52524 - 4036
event@khm.at
One time around the world
Guided tour at Weltmuseum Wien
In this thematic tour especially for senior citizens, we tell you about the history of the museum using the most important objects. Hear about the collector Archduke Franz Ferdinand, about the Habsburg Leopoldine, who is still revered today as Empress of Brazil, and how it came about that Emperor Franz Josef helped give birth to the first Maori tribal newspaper in New Zealand.
Bookings via kulturvermittlung@weltmuseumwien.at
Exhibition at the Queer Museum Vienna
How does the body take shape under pressure?
The exhibition 'How does the body take shape under pressure?' brings together an international group of contemporary artists whose works emerge from multiple experiences of pressure and question the dynamics of disproportionate forces. Between the lines of passive and defensive, social and intimate, pressure and pleasure, the exhibition presents allegorical positions of artists to reflect on political repression against queer and feminist existences.
Curated by Alper Turan and Nazım Ünal Yılmaz, the exhibition, in which most of the artists are from Turkey, builds an imaginary bridge between Vienna and Istanbul.
Exhibition duration: 18 May 2022 until 15 June 2022
Location: Queer Museum Vienna @ Volkskundemuseum, Laudongasse 15-19, 1080 Vienna
This exhibition is supported by the Cultural Commission of @bvjosefstadt and WASt Vienna Anti-Discrimination Office @stadtwien
For more information visit:
Queer Museum Vienna or Volkskundemuseum
Exhibition at the Queer Museum Vienna
How does the body take shape under pressure?
The exhibition 'How does the body take shape under pressure?' brings together an international group of contemporary artists whose works emerge from multiple experiences of pressure and question the dynamics of disproportionate forces. Between the lines of passive and defensive, social and intimate, pressure and pleasure, the exhibition presents allegorical positions of artists to reflect on political repression against queer and feminist existences.
Curated by Alper Turan and Nazım Ünal Yılmaz, the exhibition, in which most of the artists are from Turkey, builds an imaginary bridge between Vienna and Istanbul.
Exhibition duration: 18 May 2022 until 15 June 2022
Location: Queer Museum Vienna @ Volkskundemuseum, Laudongasse 15-19, 1080 Vienna
This exhibition is supported by the Cultural Commission of @bvjosefstadt and WASt Vienna Anti-Discrimination Office @stadtwien
For more information visit:
Queer Museum Vienna or Volkskundemuseum
Learn more about queerness in art!
Please also feel free to check out the websites of other museums highlighting the queerness in art: