The Vienna Furniture Museum has one of the most extensive collections of furniture from the most diverse eras. Your journey through time takes you from Rococo to Historicism using imperial interiors and shows the developments in furniture design from Viennese Modernism to the present day. The interiors from then to now can be explored, often in complete living situations.
Today, the Vienna Furniture Museum (formerly the Imperial Furniture Collection) is a unique mixture of warehouse, workshop, administration and museum that cannot be found anywhere else. The depot is dedicated to the restoration, preservation and management of the collection. A selection of the most beautiful and important objects are on display in the museum. Over the centuries, the former "junk room of the monarchy" has become one of the most important furniture collections in the world.
Cage with the canaries of Emperor Franz © BMobV/SKB, photo Lois Lammerhuber
The Habsburgs in person
A wheeled armchair, a cradle, a bed: at the Vienna Furniture Museum, everyday objects like these are more than just inanimate objects. They are silent witnesses to the secret states of mind of their former owners. They speak openly of joy and sorrow, pain and tragedy. The "wheelchair", for example, gives an idea of the agony of Empress Elisabeth Christine, who was prescribed eating cures and red wine to increase her fertility until she was confined to this wheelchair, while the extensive collection of sanitary porcelain tells us that even royalty had deeply human needs. Spittoons, bidets and "room retirades" provide an insight into highly private, even intimate processes in the imperial house. Rudolf's magnificent cradle, on the other hand, is a reminder of the jubilation at the birth of the long-awaited heir to the throne - and his deathbed from Mayerling is a reminder of his gruesome death. Sisi's scales betray her exaggerated cult of beauty and Maximilian's simple transport coffin testifies to the shattered dream of a Mexican empire. The cage for Franz II/I's canaries Bibi and Büberl proves that not everything was tragic in the House of Habsburg: even emperors could be enchanted for a moment by birdsong!
Vienna Furniture Museum, Biedermeier © SKB, Severin Wurnig
Special exhibition "Here We Are! Women in design 1900 - today"
Whether as designers of furniture, fashion or industrial products, as interior designers or entrepreneurs - women have made decisive contributions to the development of modern design.
The exhibition presents female designers from the last 120 years and tells a new, polyphonic design story against the backdrop of the fight for equality. On display are works by around 80 female designers, including protagonists of modernism such as Eileen Gray, Charlotte Perriand, Lilly Reich and Clara Porset, entrepreneurs such as Florence Knoll and Armi Ratia, but also lesser-known personalities such as the social reformer Jane Addams. Contemporary positions are represented by designers such as Matali Crasset, Patricia Urquiola, Julia Lohmann and the Matri-Archi(tecture) and Futuress collectives, leading visitors into the present and the future.
The exhibition "Here We Are! Women in Design 1900 - today" is as diverse as the discussions on feminism in today's society. It thus offers a new, contemporary look at the history of modern design and current debates and provides food for thought on what design should be in the 21st century, who defines it and who it is for. The exhibition is accompanied by a diverse program.
March 1 to June 30, 2024
