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 Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna with Maria-Theresien-Platz | |
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| Established | 1871–1891 |
|---|---|
| Location | Maria Theresien PlatzVienna, Austria |
| Coordinates | 48°12′14″N16°21′42″E / 48.203881°N 16.3616°E /48.203881; 16.3616 |
| Type | Art museum |
| Visitors | 1,688,509 (2023)[1] |
| Director | Jonathan Fine (since 2025) |
| Architects | Karl Hasenauer Gottfried Semper |
| Website | www |
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TheKunsthistorisches Museum Wien (lit. "Vienna Museum ofArt History", often referred to as the "Museum of Fine Arts, Vienna") is anart museum inVienna, Austria. Housed in its festive palatial building on theVienna Ring Road, it is crowned with an octagonaldome. The termKunsthistorisches Museum applies to both the institution and the main building. It is thelargest art museum in the country.
EmperorFranz Joseph I ofAustria-Hungary opened the facility around 1891 at the same time as theNatural History Museum, Vienna which has a similar design and is directly acrossMaria-Theresien-Platz.[2] The two buildings were constructed between 1871 and 1891 according to plans byGottfried Semper andBaron Karl von Hasenauer. The emperor commissioned the two Ringstraße museums to create a suitable home for theHabsburgs' formidable art collection and to make it accessible to the general public. The buildings are rectangular, with symmetricalRenaissance Revivalfaçades ofsandstone lined with large arched windows on the main levels and topped with octagonal domes 60 metres (200 ft) high. The interiors of the museums are lavishly decorated with marble,stucco ornamentation, gold-leaf, and murals. Thegrand stairway features paintings byGustav Klimt,Ernst Klimt,Franz Matsch,Hans Makart andMihály Munkácsy.[3]
The museum's primary collections are those of theHabsburgs, particularly from theportrait andarmour collections ofFerdinand of Tirol, the collections of EmperorRudolph II (the largest part of which is, however, scattered), and the collection ofpaintings ofArchduke Leopold Wilhelm, of which his Italian paintings were first documented in theTheatrum Pictorium.
Notable works in the picture gallery include:
The collections of the Kunsthistorisches Museum:
Also affiliated are the:
In 2010, an Austrian government panel recommended that the Kunsthistorisches Museum should restitute two altar panels by the 16th-century Dutch artist,Maerten van Heemskerck to the heirs ofRichard Neumann, a Jewish art collector in Vienna plundered by the Nazis.[4]
In 2015, a dispute over a painting byPieter Bruegel the Elder,The Fight Between Carnival and Lent (1559), erupted between Poland and Austria. Poland presented evidence that the painting had been seized by Charlotte von Wächter, the wife of Krakow's Nazi governorOtto von Wächter, during theGerman occupation of Poland.[5] The Kunsthistorisches Museum, insisted that it had owned the painting since the 17th century, and that the artwork seized by von Wächter in 1939 "was a different painting".[6]
One of the museum's most important objects, theCellini Salt Cellar sculpture byBenvenuto Cellini, was stolen on 11 May 2003 and recovered on 21 January 2006, in a box buried in a forest near the town ofZwettl. It was featured in an episode ofMuseum Secrets on theHistory Channel. It had been the greatestart theft in Austrian history.[7]
The museum is the subject of Johannes Holzhausen's documentary filmThe Great Museum (2014), filmed over two years in the run up to the re-opening of the newly renovated and expanded Kunstkammer rooms in 2013.
From October 2018 through January 2019 the museum hosted the world's largest-ever exhibition of works byPieter Bruegel the Elder calledBruegel – Once in a Lifetime.[8]
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A passionate collector, Neumann amassed more than 200 art works in his Vienna villa. He escaped Austria after the Nazi annexation via Switzerland to Paris. When the Nazis occupied France, he fled by foot through the Pyrenees to Spain. From there he reached Cuba, where he settled, and participated in the 1954 founding of an art museum in Havana. He later moved to New York to be with his daughter, and died there in 1961, age 82. Neumann's artworks were seized by the Nazis, then released shortly afterward to allow a sale to the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. Neumann's daughter sold the altar panels in 1938. The money went into a frozen account to pay Neumann's "emigration tax."
The Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, meanwhile, claims that it has owned the painting since the 17th century, and that the artwork seized by von Wächter in 1939 was a different painting.
Media related toKunsthistorisches Museum at Wikimedia Commons
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