joseph scissorhands: mumok

Sunday 26 July 2020

mumok

Another museum which I hadn't experienced on previous visits to Vienna but was determined to see on this trip was the huge, imposing black, basalt stone edifice that sits in a corner of Vienna's Museum Quarter - mumok. Mumok (museum moderner kunst stiftung ludwig wien) is, it claims, Europe's "largest museum space for modern art". The strikingly modern building designed by architects Ortner & Ortner was opened in 2001, and houses mumok's collection of 10,000 pieces of modern and contemporary art and design made up largely from a series of donated private collections, most notably that of collectors Peter and Irene Ludwig.

As befitting the impressively modern design of the exterior, mumok's current display of art culled from its permanent collections - Reading Time in Space. Modernism at mumok 1910-1955, is displayed in a very modern way. There were lots of slotted partitions dividing the space on which the paintings were hung. It was certainly different to the way in which many other museums display artworks, and whilst experimental and playful, I personally found it a little distracting, and thought it took away the sense of gravitas of certain works. Below are some of the things I found interesting from this current display of mumok's permanent collection of art and design. I would really have liked to see more space given over to displays of the permanent collection as it contains many gems which weren't on display. I visited the other galleries featuring temporary exhibitions of contemporary art, photography and video installation on the other floors of mumok but wasn't suffiently impressed by them to record them here.