Beyond chronology and stylistic history, the exhibition The World of Tomorrow Will Have Been Another Present presents narratives from the mumok collection of classical modernism that have had an impact right up to the present day. The starting point is a form of speculation that is strongly based on temporality - a temporality that has circular traits. "Speculating," says cultural scientist Karin Harrasser, "is not about extrapolating the present or betting on probable courses of events, but about a retroactive fidelity procedure, an operation in the future tense II: speculative thinking must measure itself against the possibilities it will have brought to light."* Who, if not the artists of a 20th and 21st century collection such as that of the mumok, no matter at what time they may have been active, would understand more about this form of thinking in loops, in simultaneous retrospection and anticipation, of maneuvering in history?

Herbert Bayer, handlung, 1932, 35.4 x 28 cm, b/w photograph, mumok - Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, donated by Oswald Oberhuber, 1979 © Bildrecht, Vienna 2024
The exhibition comprises five expansive installations by Nikita Kadan, Barbara Kapusta, Frida Orupabo, Lisl Ponger and Anita Witek, all of which enter into a dialog with works of classical modernism selected by them from the mumok collection. Based on their own works of art, which are also part of the collection, and thus also based on their own practice, the contemporaries continue the history of the museum and the history of contemporary art with their selection. In the exhibition, contemporary questions meet historical variants of themselves, which in turn are directed from a past now into a future that has not yet been completed.
With works by Herbert Bayer, Hans Bellmer, Karl Blossfeldt, Louise Bourgeois, Constantin Brâncuși, Friedl Dicker-Brandeis, Henri Florence, Alberto Giacometti, Juan Gris, George Grosz, Raul Hausmann, Johannes Itten, Friedrich Kiesler, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Fernand Léger, René Magritte, Alicia Penalba, Antoine Pevsner, Man Ray, Germaine Richier, Alexander Michailowitsch Rodtschenko, Oskar Schlemmer, Kurt Schwitters, Victor Servranckx, Nicola Vučo, Fritz Wotruba and many others.
May 23, 2025 to April 6, 2026
www.mumok.at

Juan Gris, Carafe, verre et journal, 1919, 40 x 33 x 2 cm, oil on canvas, mumok - Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Donation Emanuel and Sofie Fohn 1994 © Public domain