The Present of Modernism

Is the grand utopian project of modernism still relevant today? What potential does it hold for later generations and contemporary artists? These are the questions raised by mumok’s new presentation of our collection, The Present of Modernism.

From March 14, key works of classical modernism, early abstract art, and futurist works will be shown in contrast with the avant-gardes of the early 1960s, post-minimal art, and present-day artworks by artists like Isa Genzken, Christopher Wool, and Simon Starling. This comparison will again clearly show how the visual repertories of modernism continue to be explored today. The strategies used by younger generations when they refer to modernist forms and idioms will be given ample space in this exhibition, alongside the grand themes of twentieth and twenty-first-century art.

With around 150 works, this new presentation includes paintings, sculptures, drawings, photographs, films, and architectural models. Important new acquisitions and gifts of recent years are included—with works by Carolee Schneemann, Judith Hopf, Tom Burr, and David Maljkovic. The exhibition is complemented by selected loaned works.

Architecture, urban living, and design and construction are central themes in this new show. They can be traced from modernism—from Albert Renger-Patzsch to László Moholy-Nagy to Friedrich Kiesler—to Walter Pichler or Mary Ellen Carroll in the present day. In her film Empty the Pond to Get the Fish (2008), on show at mumok kino, Runa Islam offers an exemplary perspective on the theme of this exhibition. Against the backdrop of the modernist architecture of the 20er Haus, in which mumok was first opened in 1962 as the Museum of the Twentieth Century, she describes in film several key works of classical modernism from the mumok collection.

Seldom seen works, like a selection of drawings by Josef Hoffmann or architectural models by Adolf Loos, Le Corbusier, and Fritz Wotruba, can be seen alongside classics from the mumok collection. This combination of older and younger generations also includes a number of Austrian positions, with works by Arnulf Rainer, Marc Adrian, Dorit Margreiter, Florian Pumhösl, and Anna Artaker.