Art Night in Museumsquartier

A prospective post may be more useful on the topic of museum bargains, but for anyone currently in Vienna or traveling here soon, mark your calendars: the first Thursday night of the month is Art Night, meaning admission for three of the museums in the Quartier for the price of one!

Vienna equals paradise for a museum lover. The Museum's Quartier has everything, modern art, contemporary art, architecture, technology, a children's museum...the list goes on. It also boasts a couple cool night clubs, trendy restaurants, and free wireless internet until 2 A.M. I am a devotee. Head to the Quartier and spend some time lounging on the cool outdoor, well, "lounges" I guess they would be called.
I visited the Leopold Museum, which houses works by Klimt (that guy is everywhere), Kolo Moser, and my favorite, Egon Schiele. Schiele was an Austian Expressionist. An embodiment of the the modernism of the Secessionist Movement, his sexual and provocative paintings are still shocking. I can only imagine what people thought in 1905. (Actually they put him in prison on charges of pornography...)


I also walked through a "Dream and Trauma" exhibit in the Museum of Modern Art (Kunsthall). I have to admit, it left me sort of cold. Especially juxtaposed between the beauty of the secessionist movement, which, while avante guard, still held the charms of form and expression, this exhibit was, well, creepy, for lack of a better description. The idea was to blur the line between traumatic, horrible experiences, and our imagination. I saw lots of blurried, bloodied, photographs, some inexplicable sculptures, and a giant painting of a birthday cake. I think I have to be in the right mood to really appreciate that sort of thing.