Information

The holdings of the Collections raise questions about the discourse on the applied and fine arts, both within the context of the role of the University of Applied Arts Vienna as an artistic and academic educational institution and beyond the conventional distinction between the two fields.

Art, Architecture, and Design Collection
Together with the University Archive, the Art, Architecture, and Design Collection forms the core of the present-day Collection and Archive Institute. Beginning in 1979, numerous artistic works and documents were separated from the library collection of the former Hochschule für angewandte Kunst in Wien, as it was then called, and transferred to a newly created College Archive. The appointment of Oswald Oberhuber as rector gave rise to the creation of an independent department, as well as the museological analysis of its holdings and their systematic expansion to include both important works and artists’ estates and legacies. This continued under the direction of Erika Patka until 2004 and Patrick Werkner from 2004 to 2018.

The College Archive was an important foundation for Oberhuber’s programmatic approach toward both the development and the material preservation of an alternative historiography of ‘Austrian Art’, particularly with respect to the history of the Central European avant-gardes of the twentieth century, of abstraction, as well as of the ideological preconditions and repercussions of National Socialism.

This cultural-political agenda and the specific, historically grounded interweaving of a collection of artistic originals with sources that render visible both their production conditions and their discursive and institutional contexts—through original documents, literature, autographs, and photographs—creates a unique foundation for research into the history of the school itself as well as for works and biographies of individuals associated with it. This continues to serve as a starting point for the critical development and ongoing renewal of the Collection’s program.

Fashion and Textile Collection
The Institute’s Collections also include the Fashion and Textile Collection (formerly the Costume and Fashion Collection), which was incorporated into the Institute in 2004 and has a specific functional history. It is based on a collection of costumes that were used as models in the nineteenth century in historicist painting education at the School of Arts and Crafts of the Royal Imperial Austrian Museum for Art and Industry. From the 1910s, this teaching collection was cataloged by the textile artist Rosalia Rothansl, supplemented with works by her students and cottage-industry textiles from Central Europe and Asia and introduced into artistic instruction. From the 1950s, the set designer Elli Rolf and the costume historian Annemarie Bönsch expanded the holdings with numerous objects from various geographical regions, aiming to document a universal history of clothing from both ethnographic and developmental perspectives. A large portion of the holdings collected since the beginning of the twenty-first century are works by teachers and (former) students, as well as their labels. A new focus lies on works whose production is situated at the point where textiles, fashion, and art meet.

The Collection holdings can be viewed upon advance written registration and under consideration of the Collection and Archive regulations. Loan requests should be submitted via email. In the case of requests for tours, such as in the context of seminars, please allow for longer processing times.

• Friedl Dicker-Brandeis
• Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky Network
• Peter Weibel Archive
   
• Friedrich Berzeviczy-Pallavicini
• Josef Frank
• Carry Hauser
• Franz Herberth
• Josef Hoffmann
• Hilda Jesser
• Erika Giovanna Klien
• Anton Kolig
• Rudolf von Larisch
• Maria Likarz-Strauss
• Bertold Löffler
• Koloman Moser
• Elly Niebuhr
• Otto Niedermoser
• Oswald Oberhuber
• Dagobert Peche
• Leopold Wolfgang Rochowanski
• Mileva Roller
• Franz Schuster
• Adele Stark
• Eduard Wimmer-Wisgrill
• Emmy Zweybrück
• Viennese Modernism and the Wiener Werkstätte
• Viennese Kineticism and the group around Franz Čižek

• Various branches of applied and fine arts from the 20th century to the present, like photography, graphics, furniture, ceramics, painting and sculpture, including a collection of Polish poster art

• Austrian modernist architectural models

Locations:
Postgasse 6 (Mezzanin, 1. Stock)
1010 Wien

Eyzinggasse 23 (1. Stock, 3. Stock)
1110 Wien

Contact
judith.burger@uni-ak.ac.at

The Collection holdings can be viewed upon advance written registration and under consideration of the Collection and Archive regulations. Loan requests should be submitted via email. In the case of requests for tours, such as in the context of seminars, please allow for longer processing times.