Encounter of six collections: Selected art highlights from Austria, the Czech Republic, Serbia and Latvia
Vienna (OTS) – On the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the Wiener Städtische Versicherungsverein, the main shareholder of the Vienna Insurance Group, the Leopold Museum, as a long-standing partner, is presenting a comprehensive exhibition that will bring together highlights from all six of the group’s collections for the first time from May 8th. Unknown Familiars. The collections of the Vienna Insurance Group shows carefully selected works from the collections of the insurance group companies in Austria, the Czech Republic, Serbia and Latvia. The diverse media presentation covers an entire museum floor and brings together more than 200 works in various genres from different eras. Young contemporary art meets the modernism of the interwar period, the avant-garde of the 1970s meets important positions in Austrian contemporary art.
„Our exhibition puts unknowns in the room – more precisely, it is about unknown familiars, relatives unknown to each other. The works presented in the Leopold Museum come from the collections of companies that are connected to the Vienna Insurance Group but are meeting there for the first time. To do this, we consciously remove some of the cornerstones of familiar art appreciation in favor of an encounter with the new. As an invisible prism, surrealism allows the very different collections to appear in unexpected bundles across art historical periods and media.
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Philippe Batka, curator of the exhibition and the art collections of the Vienna Insurance Group
Art from the collections of the Vienna Insurance Group in the Leopold Museum
Already in 2007 they were at the Leopold Museum as part of the exhibition Grund, Mucha, Čapek,… Czech paintings from the Kooperativa collection Works from the Czech collection of the Vienna Insurance Group can be seen. In 2010 the museum showed with Ringturm.Art. Collection Vienna Insurance Group Parts of the collections of Wiener Städtische, Wiener Städtische Versicherungsverein and DONAU Versicherung. Presented in the anniversary year 2024 Unknown Familiars In addition, excerpts from the collections of the Serbian Wiener Städtische osiguranje and the Latvian BTA Baltic.
„We have set priorities in our selection from the individual collections, but in the presentation of the works, the individual works are in a cross-collection dialogue. There is also no chronological sequence within the exhibition course. Rather, we have worked out relationships between the individual works that aim to make correspondences visible in an intuitive way. The direct encounter with art is very important to us.
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Vanessa Joan Müller, co-curator of the exhibition
Encounters from six collections
„Unknown Familiars as a rendezvous of works of art from the various collections represents an exciting encounter that holds many surprises and allows unknown people to communicate with each other across temporal and spatial limitations. The presentation lives from its comparisons, from the analogies as well as from its opposites: well-known icons of art history from classical modernism from Gustav Klimt to Oskar Kokoschka meet less familiar positions from Daniela Kostova to Elena Narbutaitė. This creates an inspiring encounter and dialogue between the collections and epochs, which – despite different historical, social and temporal contexts – tells of similarities, but also of different cultural and formal aesthetic worlds.
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Hans-Peter Wipplinger, Direktor Leopold Museum
„We support artists and give those interested access to art and culture, because we know: art is food for the soul. On the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the Wiener Städtische Versicherungsverein, we are showing selected works from all collections represented in our insurance group from Austria, the Czech Republic, Serbia and Latvia in the Leopold Museum for the first time. We have been cooperating with the most visited house in Vienna’s Museum Quarter for almost two decades, and Wiener Städtische insures the works of art in the Leopold Museum thanks to our long-standing relationship. We wish all visitors much joy and maximum enjoyment of art.
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Robert Lasshofer, CEO of Wiener Städtische Versicherungsverein
Familial things from an unusual perspective
Unknown Familiars is characterized by media diversity and shows important representatives of a subversive and conceptual avant-garde who are even less known in Western Europe. The presentation takes place on the entire floor around the lower atrium, is designed circularly within the framework of an exhibition architecture by Robert Müller and can be explored starting from the central atrium via each of the four halls. Supported by an unusual display and an associatively designed course, the exhibition positions itself Unknown Familiars just like the accompanying publication, a slanting light, the familiar – Family – moves into an unfamiliar perspective. The exhibition can be seen until October 6, 2024.
Publication about the exhibition
The texts in the accompanying exhibition catalog, written by Philippe Batka and Vanessa Joan Müller, are dedicated to the works in the exhibition with explanations and classifications, work out overarching relationships and thus make the curatorial decisions relevant to the exhibition comprehensible.
Curators: Philippe Batka, Vanessa Joan Müller
Link to the exhibition website
Link to detailed press information and high-resolution press photos
More pictures in the APA-Fotogalerie
The invitation to the celebrations on the occasion of Opening by Leopold Museum director Hans-Peter Wipplinger and Robert Lasshofer, chairman of the Wiener Städtische Versicherungsverein, more than 500 visitors followed – in the presence of the Leopold Museum board members Josef Ostermayer, Sonja Hammerschmid, Saskia Leopold and Danielle Spera as well as Moritz Stipsicz, the commercial director of the Leopold Museum. Among them are the curators of the exhibition Philippe Batka and Vanessa Joan Müller, the general directors and board directors of the Vienna Insurance Group Hartwig Löger, Günter Geyer, Helene Kanta, Svetlana Smiljanić, Herbert Allram, Philippe Bardas, Christine Dornaus, Edeltraud Fichtenbauer , Barbara Grötschnig, Oskar Hartmanis, Judith Havasi, Liane Hirner, Peter Höfinger, Karin Kafesie, Gerhard Lahner, Martin Laur, Evija Matveja, Vladimir Mráz, Ralph Müller, Romana Pavlis, Wolfgang Petschko, Hans Raumauf, Georg Riedl, Harald Riener, Martin Simhandl, Klaudia Stolitzka and Peter Thirring, in the exhibition Unknown Familiars represented artists Iris Andraschek, Markus Bacher, Judith Fegerl, Birke Gorm, Martha Jungwirth, Barbara Kapusta, Luisa Kasalicky, Niklas Lichti, Luiza Margan, Elena Narbutaite, Evelyn Plaschg, Astrid Rausch, Marianne Vlaschits, exhibition architect Robert Müller, the gallery owner* artists and art dealers Martin Janda, Emanuel Layr, Christian Mayer and Renate Kainer, Susanne Bauer, Eivind Furnesvik, Deniz Pekerman (director of the Galerie nächst St. Stephan), Cornelis van Almsick, the collectors Diethard Leopold and Werner Trenker, the director of the MQ Bettina Leidl, Dom Museum Vienna director Johanna Schwanberg, curator Dieter Buchhart, the artists Victoria Coeln, Lorenz Estermann, Johanna Kandl, Herwig Kempinger, Hubert Lobnig, Tobias Pils and Werner Reiterer, Harald Friedrich (Liechtensteinische Landesbank), Provost Anton Höslinger ( Klosterneuburg Abbey), Werner Muhm, Peter Weinhäupl and Sandra Tretter (Klimt Foundation), Christoph Thun-Hohenstein (head of section at the Foreign Ministry), advertiser Mariusz Demner, art historian Thomas Zaun Schirm, Hans Unterdorfer (Erste Bank), attorney Clemens Schindler, entrepreneur Hyo-Sook Clara Song and Jieun An (World Culture Networks), Barbara Kolm (Austrian Economics Center), Stefan Ottrubay (Chairman, Esterházy Foundations), Fanny Zerz (viennacontemporary) and many more
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