About us

About us

The Collection and Archive institute conceives of itself as both the material memory of the University of Applied Arts Vienna and an instrument for its continuing development. Its work combines portfolio maintenance, exhibition making, documentation, research, and teaching.

Florian Pfaffenberger, Schaukasten Kunstsammlung und Archiv, 2018.
digitale Collage

Kunstsammlung und Archiv, Universität für angewandte Kunst Wien, © Florian Paffenberger

History

Founded in 1980 on the initiative of the artist and then-rector Oswald Oberhuber as a teaching collection to encourage artistic practice among students, the institute is today just as public-facing as it is directed toward intra-university structures. The Collection and Archive holdings are regularly presented as loans on the international stage. They document the institutional history of the University since its founding in 1867 as the School of Arts and Crafts of the Imperial Royal Austrian Museum for Art and Industry, the diverse artistic developments of Viennese Modernism, and the transnational careers and networks of the protagonists connected with the University of Applied Arts. As objects of exhibition and research, the holdings play a significant role in the dialogue between the University and the greater public. The institute presents them in a variety of formats, ranging from specialist consulting, exhibition conception and design, courses, conferences, talk series, publications, and editions, to cooperations with artists, other institutes and departments of the University of Applied Arts, and international partners.

IN 1549

Erika Giovanna Klien, Klessheimer Sendbote, 1927.
Bleistift, Buntstift, Kreide, Deckweiß auf Papier, 31,6 x 23,3 cm

Kunstsammlung und Archiv, Universität für angewandte Kunst Wien

IN 14.774/8

Elisabeth Karlinsky, Kostümentwurf, 1923 - 1924.
Tempera, Kohle, Goldfarbe auf Papier, 31,9 x 22,6 cm

Kunstsammlung und Archiv, Universität für angewandte Kunst Wien

At the heart of all its initiatives, a university of art is engaged in the continuous renegotiation of the very concept of art. We understand our work as an actualizing, recontextualizing, and experimental practice – one that facilitates new, critical perspectives and renders visible previously suppressed positions. In all our projects, we aim to shape contemporary discourse and contribute to the University of Applied Arts Vienna’ position in both the international field of art and contemporary society. Alongside the acquisition of artistic works and primary sources, we support and develop new productions with a connection to the institute’s key areas of focus. These include the historiography of Viennese Modernism and the processing of the University’s history – particularly with an intersectional reference to women’s and gender history; the field of tension between applied and fine art; the exhibition as artistic form; the examination of structural conditions of the marginalization of designers and artists; the relationship between a work and its documentation; and seemingly subordinate forms of production and collaborative work.

Collection Holdings

The collection currently holds numerous objects from all areas of applied and fine arts of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, particularly from Viennese Modernism. These include drawings, posters, furniture, textiles, photographs, ceramic pieces, paintings, objects, and architectural models by Fred Adlmüller, Friedrich Berzeviczy-Pallavicini, Friedl Dicker-Brandeis, Josef Hoffmann, Gertrud Höchsmann, Oskar Kokoschka, Anton Kolig, Adele List, Bertold Löffler, Elly Niebuhr, Otto Niedermoser, Oswald Oberhuber, Victor J. Papanek, Franz Schuster, Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, Peter Weibel, Emmy Zweybrück, the Wiener Werkstätte, and Vienna Kineticism, as well as Baroque and domestic-industry textiles from the historical teaching material collections of Carl Karger and Rosalia Rothansl, and from the private collection of Mileva Stoisavjlevic-Roller a.o.

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Team

Sen.Sc. Mag. Cosima Rainer

+43 1 71133 3250

  • Head of the Institute

Cosima Rainer is a curator, author, and institutional director based in Vienna. Since 2018, she has served as Director of the Art Collection and Archive at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. In this role, she develops exhibitions, research formats, and collaborative teaching projects that connect historical archival materials with contemporary artistic practice. A central focus of her work lies in activating historical collections as sites of artistic research, experimental pedagogy, and curatorial inquiry.

Prior to this, Rainer held curatorial and leadership positions at the Galerie der Stadt Schwaz, the Belvedere / 21er Haus in Vienna, and the Generali Foundation. She has curated numerous exhibitions in Austria and internationally, including the 2009 European Capital of Culture project See this Sound. Promises of Picture and Sound at the Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz. In her publications, she develops a form of curatorial art historiography that activates historical positions and artistic practices as models for contemporary artistic and institutional questions.

OR Silvia Herkt, MA, BA

+43 1 71133 3252

  • Deputy Co-Head of the Institute
  • Co-Head Collections and University Archive

Silvia Herkt ist Leiterin des Universitätsarchivs, Co-Leitung der Sammlung Kunst, Architektur und Design sowie stellvertretende Leiterin der Forschungseinrichtung Kunstsammlung und Archiv.

Masterabschluss in Public Management/Bereich Wissensmanagement. Seit 1981 Mitarbeiterin im Archiv der heutigen Universität für angewandte Kunst Wien. Beteiligung an zahlreichen Ausstellungen und Publikationen von Kunstsammlung und Archiv.

Das Archiv der Universität für angewandte Kunst Wien ist als Teil von Kunstsammlung und Archiv dem Bereich Lehre, Kunstentwicklung und Forschung zugeordnet. Die zentralen Aufgaben des Archivs sind die Sicherung, Bereitstellung und Auswertung der administrativen, künstlerischen und wissenschaftlichen Leistungen der Universität. Es agiert interdisziplinär und nimmt seine Aufgabe als Teil des kulturellen Gedächtnisses wahr. Die Symbiose mit der Sammlung Kunst, Architektur und Design, die etwa 65.000 Objekte umfasst und kontinuierlich ausgebaut wird, ist eine Besonderheit, die von den Mitarbeiter*innen und den Besucher*innen geschätzt wird.

Sen.Sc. Mag. Stefanie Kitzberger

+43 1 71133 2840

  • Deputy Co-Head of the Institute
  • Co-Head Collections and University Archive

Stefanie Kitzberger is researcher and lecturer (Senior Scientist) and head of the department of Fashion and Textiles at Collection and Archive of the University of Applied Arts Vienna. She teaches and publishes on twentieth century and contemporary art, with a strong interest in the intersections of Marxist, Feminist and Critical race theory. In her PhD-thesis The Constructivist Imaginary. Models of the Transgression of Art in Early Russian Constructivism 1920-1923 she is specializing on Russian/Soviet Art of the 1920s and its historiographies within art history (completion expected in 2022). Together with Cosima Rainer she is currently preparing a publication on the modernist artist and activist Friedl Dicker-Brandeis (1898-1944). From 2015-2017 Stefanie has held an IFK_Junior Fellowship from the International Research Center of Cultural Studies Vienna/Linz and in 2020 a Doctoral Dissertation Completion Grant from the Literar Mechana Wahrnehmungsgesellschaft für Urheberrechte GesmbH. From 2016-2017 she has been a Predoctoral Visiting Fellow at Northwestern University and the University of Kent, and from 2018-2020 University Assistant at the Institute of Art History, University of Vienna. 

Sen.Sc. Mag. Dr. Bernadette Reinhold

+43 1 71133 3253

  • Leitung Oskar Kokoschka Zentrum

Bernadette Reinhold is director of the Oskar Kokoschka Centre and Senior Scientist at the Institute Collection and Archive at the University of Applied Arts Vienna since 2008. She studied art history, history and philosophy at the University Vienna, dissertation on Kokoschka and the Austrian cultural policy (promotion 2017). Freelance researcher at the Federal Monuments Authority Austria (BDA) in Vienna (1991-1998), member of the Commission for Provenance Research at the BDA (1997-2008), 2005-2008 researcher on the FWF Austrian Science Fund project about the Hofburg in Vienna at the Austrian Academy of Science (ÖAW). Board member of the Austrian Society for Architecture/ÖGfA (2000-2005) and the Oskar Kokoschka Dokumentation Pöchlarn (since 2009). Research projects, publications, exhibitions, and teaching on architectural and urban history, modern art, Austrian cultural policy, gender studies and biography research.