Sharing Stories 25 October 2017 to 28 February 2019 Over the course of more than two years, beginning in 2015, the Weltmuseum Wien has set up ten temporary stations around Vienna and invited the broad public to bring an object meaningful to them and to tell its story. Farrokh Fattahi’s Comparsita © Tal Adler About the exhibition About the exhibition Alongside the 150 stories we collected, the exhibition highlights a selection of 20 of them. These objects are portrayed in Tal Adler’s photographic...

JUMP!STAR Simmering JUMP!STAR Simmering, a process-oriented artistic project organised by the Brunnenpassage cultural centre and the Weltmuseum Wien was originally scheduled to take place in the Viennese district of Simmering but was ultimately held online with a virtual format because of the social distancing measures due to the Covid-19 pandemic. © George Ferrandi About the project About the project The artistic point of departure for JUMP!STAR is the barely known fact that in 1,000 years from...

Pop-Up World Narratives 25 October 2017 to 26 August 2018 The reopening of the Weltmuseum Wien is accompanied by an innovative book about the Museum. The exhibition Pop-Up World: Narratives turns part of this book into a real-life experience. Sets of several objects are arranged into individual narratives. The range of themes stretches from traditional ethnography to art history, from historical backgrounds of object acquisitions to the beliefs of various world religions, and from collectors and...

South Sudan Museums Network Connecting the arts and heritage of South Sudan in European museums As part of an international network of European museums, experts and representatives from South Sudan and the Weltmuseum Wien are making tangible steps towards a major programme of research and exploration based on South Sudanese museum collections. Pair of figures, Unknown Bari master, South Sudan, before 1882, Gift by Martin Hansal, Imperial and Royal Consul in Khartoum The Weltmuseum Wien has been...

Franz is here! Franz Ferdinand’s journey around the world 9 April to 2 November 2014 “Franz is here!” was the headline of an American newspaper article referring to the visit of Archduke Franz Ferdinand during his world trip 1892/93. Now, 100 years after his death in Sarajevo, Franz Ferdinand visited the Weltmuseum Wien. The presentation offered unexpected insights into the world of this many-facetted and polarising figure. June 28 th 2014 marks the centenary of the assassination of the heir...

Beyond the Future Modern japanese Calligraphy 30 March 2023 to 9 January 2024 On the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the calligraphy group Keiseikai in 2020, artists planned a memorial exhibition under the motto ‘Japanese calligraphers dedicated to Vienna’, which had to be postponed due to Covid-19. The artists paid tribute to Austria’s generous support in 2011, when eastern Japan was hit by a major earthquake that caused the nuclear disaster of Fukushima. Himmel über dem Turm zu Babel,...

Tabita Rezaire Calabash Nebula: Cosmological Tales of Connection 17 September 2025 to 11 January 2026 With Tabita Rezaire. Calabash Nebula: Cosmological Tales of Connection, Weltmuseum Wien presents the first solo exhibition of Tabita Rezaire (*1989) in Austria. In her work, the multidisciplinary artist, activist, and healer combines digital technologies with spiritual, non-Western, and indigenous knowledge systems. Through her artistic practice, she explores healing as a decolonial strategy and...

Colonialism on the Window Sill 28 May 2025 to 25 May 2026 This exhibition shines a spotlight on ten plants that have been favourites of European living rooms and balconies for centuries, though their natural habitats are outside the continent. These plants share a history with our ethnographic collections; some of them joined the objects on long naval voyages to reach Europe and the museums. Beyond the demand for medicinal plants and crops (nowadays ‘cash crops’ that are cultivated on a grand...

Objects on tour Drawings by Juman Malouf 5 December 2019 to 31 January 2020 These drawings by Juman Malouf portray objects from the collections of the Weltmuseum that have been borrowed for the exhibition 'Il sarcofago di Spitzmaus e altri tesori”, curated by Wes Anderson and Juman Malouf. The exhibition is on display at the Fondazione Prada, Milan, until January 13th, 2020. The drawings are exhibited for a short time in the Galleries of Marvel at Weltmuseum Wien. Powder horn drawing © Juman...

(Un)Known Artists of the Amazon 24 April 2024 to 21 April 2025 This exhibition is a project jointly undertaken by the Weltmuseum Wien and the private Museu de Arte Indígena (MAI) in Curitiba, Brazil. The show’s curators, Claudia Augustat and Julianna Polodan Martins (MAI), engage these two museum collections in dialogue, reflecting thereby the manner in which autonomous works of art have evolved from functional and ritual objects. Manoel Martins Neto Preparation for body painting (detail) 2018 ©...

Travel & Collections S.M. Schiff Aurora, k.k. Kriegsmarine The collections of the ship Aurora from the years 1886-96, now housed in the Weltmuseum Vienna, contain over 400 objects from the Caribbean, Oceania, Africa and Asia, as well as photographs. The exemplary investigation of some provenances and the presentation of the activities, functions and intentions of the imperial royal navy ( k.k. Kriegsmarine ), building on the last research project (voyage of the ship Frundsberg 1884-85), are the...

Insights into Japan-related Overseas Artefacts and Documents from the 19th century in Europe Research and Use This research project, initiated by Japan, is devoted to the scientific reappraisal of the Heinrich von Siebolds (1852–1908) Collection in the Weltmuseum Wien. So far, approximately 5,400 objects from the areas of art and everyday life have been made accessible since 2016 in publications, exhibitions and databases. About the project About the project The project Insights into...