museum in progress is a private art association based in

Vienna Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...

. The non-profit art initiative was created in 1990 by Kathrin Messner and Josef Ortner († 2009) with the aim to develop new presentation forms for contemporary art. The projects are implemented in each case on the basis of co-operation between economy, art and media.

Exhibition activity

The exhibition activity of museum in progress concentrates on media and public spaces. For example, newspapers, magazines, billboards, building fronts, television and internet are used. The works of art exhibited by museum in progress are specifically created for the medium, dependent on the context, and temporary. This working technique enables museum in progress to overcome the distance between everyday life and places of art as well as to reach a far larger public than traditional museums.

Projects

* ''Art, Society and Media'' (1994–1996): Symposium with artists, art critics, philosophers and essayists about art, media and the social reality of the 1990s. Contributions were published in

Der Standard ''Der Standard'' () is an Austrian daily newspaper published in Vienna. It is considered a newspaper of record for Austria. History and profile ''Der Standard'' was founded by Oscar Bronner as a financial newspaper and published its first editio ...

. Participants:

Jean Baudrillard Jean Baudrillard (, ; ; – 6 March 2007) was a French sociology, sociologist and philosopher with an interest in cultural studies. He is best known for his analyses of media, contemporary culture, and technological communication, as well as hi ...

Pierre Bourdieu Pierre Bourdieu (, ; ; ; 1 August 1930 – 23 January 2002) was a French sociologist and public intellectual. Bourdieu's contributions to the sociology of education, the theory of sociology, and sociology of aesthetics have achieved wide influ ...

Gilles Deleuze Gilles Louis René Deleuze (18 January 1925 – 4 November 1995) was a French philosopher who, from the early 1950s until his death in 1995, wrote on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volumes o ...

Carsten Höller Carsten Höller (born December 1961) is a German artist. He lives and works in Stockholm, Sweden.Alice Rawsthorn (January 2012)"Cliff Hanger - The Ghanaian home of artists Carsten Höller and Marcel Odenbach goes above—and beyond" '' W Magazin ...

Kasper König Rudolf Hans "Kasper" König (; 21 November 1943 – 9 August 2024) was a German museum director and curator. He curated exhibitions of works by Claes Oldenburg and Andy Warhol in the 1960s, initiated the ''Skulptur Projekte Münster'' in the 1970 ...

Otto Mühl Otto Muehl (16 June 1925 – 26 May 2013) was an Austrian artist and convicted sex criminal, who was known as one of the co-founders as well as a main participant of Viennese Actionism and for founding the Friedrichshof Commune. In 1943, Muehl ...

Hans-Ulrich Obrist Hans Ulrich Obrist (born 1968) is a Swiss art curator, critic, and art historian. He is artistic director at the Serpentine Galleries, London. Obrist is the author of ''The Interview Project'', an extensive ongoing project of interviews. He is ...

Paul Virilio Paul Virilio (; 4 January 1932 – 10 September 2018) was a French Culture theory, cultural theorist, Urban planning, urbanist, architect and aesthetic philosopher. He is best known for his writings about technology as it has developed in relation ...

, et al. * ''Billboard'' (1991–2001): The billboards created by artists were shown in each case on approx. 3000 billboards in Vienna for two months. Participating artists:

Jeremy Deller Jeremy Deller (born 30 March 1966) is an English people, English conceptual, video and installation artist. Much of Deller's work is Collaboration, collaborative; it has a strong political aspect, in the subjects dealt with and also the Idealiz ...

Hans-Peter Feldmann Hans-Peter Feldmann (17 January 1941 – 24 May 2023) was a German visual artist. Feldmann's approach to art-making was one of collecting, ordering, and re-presenting. Biography Feldmann was born on 17 January 1941. In the 1960s, Feldmann studied ...

, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Gerwald Rockenschaub,

Rirkrit Tiravanija Rirkrit Tiravanija (, Jerry Saltz (May 7, 2007)Conspicuous Consumption''New York Magazine''.) is a Thai contemporary artist residing in New York City, Berlin, and Chiangmai, Thailand. He was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1961. His installatio ...

Rosemarie Trockel Rosemarie Trockel (born 13 November 1952) is a German conceptual artist. She has made drawings, paintings, sculptures, videos and installations, and has worked in mixed media. From 1985, she made pictures using knitting-machines. She is a pro ...

, et al. * ''DO IT – TV-Version'' (1995–1996): The cultural show "10 1/2" of the Austrian broadcast ( ORF) weekly presented one to three minute video-clips with "instructions for action", created by international artists. Participants:

Leon Golub Leon Golub (January 23, 1922 – August 8, 2004) was an American painter. He was born in Chicago, Illinois, where he also studied, receiving his BA at the University of Chicago in 1942, and his BFA and MFA at the School of the Art Institute ...

Damien Hirst Damien Steven Hirst (; né Brennan; born 7 June 1965) is an English artist and art collector. He was one of the Young British Artists (YBAs) who dominated the art scene in the UK during the 1990s. He is reportedly the United Kingdom's richest ...

Ilya Kabakov Ilya Iosifovich Kabakov (Ukrainian: Ілля Йосипович Кабаков; Russian: Илья́ Ио́сифович Кабако́в; September 30, 1933 – May 27, 2023) was an American and Soviet conceptual artist, born in Dnipropetr ...

Yoko Ono Yoko Ono (, usually spelled in katakana as ; born February 18, 1933) is a Japanese multimedia artist, singer, songwriter, and peace activist. Her work also encompasses performance art and filmmaking. Ono grew up in Tokyo and moved to New York ...

Michelangelo Pistoletto Michelangelo Pistoletto (born 23 June 1933) is an Italian painter, action and object artist, and art theorist. Pistoletto is acknowledged as one of the main representatives of the Italian Arte Povera. His work mainly deals with the subject mat ...

Erwin Wurm Erwin Wurm (born 1954) is an Austrian artist. He lives and works in Vienna and Limberg in Austria; Hydra, Greece; and in New York City. Early life Erwin Wurm was born in Bruck an der Mur, Austria, in 1954. His father was a detective, who did n ...

, et al. * ''Portraits of Artists'' (1992–2001): A discussion series on video with artists, following an artistic concept of Peter Kogler. Participants:

Vito Acconci Vito Acconci (, ; January 24, 1940 – April 27, 2017) was an American performance art, performance, video and installation artist, whose diverse practice eventually included sculpture, architectural design, and landscape design. His performan ...

Georg Baselitz Georg Baselitz (born 23 January 1938) is a German Painting, painter, Sculpture, sculptor and Graphic arts, graphic artist. In the 1960s he became well known for his Figurative art, figurative, expressive paintings. In 1969 he began painting his ...

Günter Brus Günter Brus (27 September 1938 – 10 February 2024) was an Austrian painter, performance artist, graphic artist, experimental filmmaker, and writer. Biography Brus grew up in Mureck, attended the Kunstgewerbeschule Graz and went to Vienna ...

Gilbert & George Gilbert Prousch, sometimes referred to as Gilbert Proesch (born 17 September 1943), and George Passmore (born 8 January 1942) are artists who work together as the collaborative art duo Gilbert & George. They are known for their formal appearance ...

Jenny Holzer Jenny Holzer (born July 29, 1950) is an American neo-conceptual artist, based in Hoosick, New York. Her work focuses on the delivery of words and ideas in public spaces and includes large-scale installations, advertising billboards, projectio ...

Hermann Nitsch Hermann Nitsch (29 August 1938 – 18 April 2022) was an Austrian contemporary artist and composer. His art encompassed wide-scale Performance art, performances incorporating theater, multimedia, rituals and acted violence. He was a leading figu ...

Arnulf Rainer Arnulf Rainer (born 8 December 1929) is an Austrian painter noted for his abstract informal art. Rainer was born in Baden, Austria. During his early years, Rainer was influenced by Surrealism. In 1950, he founded the ''Hundsgruppe'' (''dog gr ...

James Rosenquist James Albert Rosenquist (November 29, 1933 – March 31, 2017) was an American artist and one of the proponents of the pop art movement. Drawing from his background working in sign painting, Rosenquist's pieces often explored the role of advert ...

Lawrence Weiner Lawrence Charles Weiner (February 10, 1942December 2, 2021) was an artist born and raised in New York City. One of the central figures in the formation of Conceptual Art in the 1960s, Lawrence Weiner explored the potentials of language as a scu ...

Christopher Wool Christopher Wool (born 1955) is an American artist. Since the 1980s, Wool's art has incorporated issues surrounding post-conceptual ideas. Early life and career Wool was born in Chicago, Illinois to Glorye and Ira Wool, a molecular biologist and ...

, Heimo Zobernig, et al. In 2017 some of these conversations were published on DVD by Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König under the title ''Artists Talking''. * ''Safety Curtain'' (since 1998): The exhibition series in the

Vienna State Opera The Vienna State Opera (, ) is a historic opera house and opera company based in Vienna, Austria. The 1,709-seat Renaissance Revival venue was the first major building on the Vienna Ring Road. It was built from 1861 to 1869 following plans by ...

transforms the fire wall between stage and auditorium into a temporary showroom for contemporary art. Participating artists:

Tauba Auerbach Tauba Auerbach (born 1981) is a visual artist working in many disciplines including painting, artists' books, sculpture, and weaving who lives and works in New York. Early life and education Auerbach grew up in San Francisco, California, the chil ...

John Baldessari John Anthony Baldessari (June 17, 1931 – January 2, 2020) was an American conceptual artist known for his work featuring found photography and appropriated images. He lived and worked in Santa Monica and Venice, California. Initially a paint ...

Matthew Barney Matthew Barney (born March 25, 1967) is an American contemporary artist and film director who works in the fields of sculpture, film, photography and drawing. His works explore connections among geography, biology, geology and mythology as well ...

, Richard Hamilton,

David Hockney David Hockney (born 9 July 1937) is an English Painting, painter, Drawing, draughtsman, Printmaking, printmaker, Scenic design, stage designer, and photographer. As an important contributor to the pop art movement of the 1960s, he is considere ...

Joan Jonas Joan Jonas (born July 13, 1936) is an American visual artist and a pioneer of video and performance art, "a central figure in the performance art movement of the late 1960s".Jeff Koons Jeffrey Lynn Koons (; born January 21, 1955) is an American artist recognized for his work dealing with popular culture and his sculptures depicting everyday objects, including balloon animals produced in stainless steel with mirror- finish s ...

Maria Lassnig Maria Lassnig (8 September 1919 – 6 May 2014) was an Austrian artist known for her painted self-portraits and her theory of "body awareness".Attias, Lauri''Maria Lassnig'', ''Frieze'', May 1996. She was the first female artist to win the Gran ...

Cy Twombly Edwin Parker "Cy" Twombly Jr. (; April 25, 1928July 5, 2011) was an American Painting, painter, Sculpture, sculptor, and photographer. Twombly influenced artists such as Anselm Kiefer, Francesco Clemente, Julian Schnabel, and Jean-Michel Bas ...

, et al. * ''Travelling Eye'' (1995–1996): An exhibition project in the news magazine profil. Participants:

Nan Goldin Nancy Goldin (born 1953) is an American photographer and activist. Her work explores in snapshot-style the emotions of the individual, in intimate relationships, and the Bohemian style, bohemian LGBT subcultural communities, especially dealing w ...

Gabriel Orozco Gabriel Orozco (born April 27, 1962) is a Mexican artist. He gained his reputation in the early 1990s for his exploration of drawing, photography, sculpture and installation. In 1998, Francesco Bonami called Orozco "one of the most influentia ...

Gerhard Richter Gerhard Richter (; born 9 February 1932) is a German visual artist. Richter has produced Abstract art, abstract as well as photorealistic paintings, photographs and Glass art, glass pieces. He is widely regarded as one of the most important con ...

, et al. * ''With an Open Mind – Tolerance and Diversity'' (2002): Twelve full-page artistic interventions in the daily papers

and

Süddeutsche Zeitung The ''Süddeutsche Zeitung'' (; ), published in Munich, Bavaria, is one of the largest and most influential daily newspapers in Germany. The tone of ''SZ'' is mainly described as centre-left, liberal, social-liberal, progressive-liberal, and ...

. Participating artists: Thomas Bayrle,

Tacita Dean Tacita Charlotte Dean CBE, RA (born 1965) is a British visual artist who works primarily in film. She was a nominee for the Turner Prize in 1998, won the Hugo Boss Prize in 2006, and was elected to the Royal Academy of Arts in 2008. She lives ...

Douglas Gordon Douglas Gordon (born 20 September 1966) is a Scottish artist. He won the Turner Prize in 1996, the Premio 2000 at the 47th Venice Biennale in 1997 and the Hugo Boss Prize in 1998. He lives and works in Berlin, Germany. Work Much of Gordon's ...

, Ken Lum, et al. * ''Woman/War/Victimage/Resistance'' (1994–1995): A work in six-parts, which deals with the insufficiently examined Austrian National Socialist past, in particular with the roles of perpetrator and victim. The exhibition series of Nancy Spero was published in

Bibliography

Daniel Birnbaum Daniel Birnbaum is a Swedish art curator and an art critic. Since 2019, he has been director and curator of Acute Art in London, UK. Early life and education Birnbaum studied at Stockholm University, Freie Universität Berlin in Germany and Col ...

: ''Museums on the Move'', in: Artforum, summer 2010, pp. 301–306. * Kim Conaty: ''museum in progress'', in Print/Out, on the occasion of the exhibition from February until May 2012 in

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...

, New York, 2012, pp. 70–79. * Galleria Continua: ''Speed & Slowness''. Deimantas Narkevicius, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Jeff Preiss and museum in progress, Prato: Gli Ori, 2003. * Edelbert Köb (Publisher): ''KünstlerInnen''. 50 Gespräche. 50 Positionen zeitgenössischer internationaler Kunst. Videoportraits und Werke, for the exhibition from 28-09 – 30-11-1997 in Kunsthaus Bregenz, Cologne: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, 1997. * Margarethe Makovec, Anton Lederer (Ed.): ''Balkan Konsulat'', for the exhibition from October 2002 to November 2003, Frankfurt on the Main: Revolver, 2006. * Kaspar Mühlemann Hartl, museum in progress; Dominique Meyer, Wiener Staatsoper (Ed.): ''CURTAIN – VORHANG. A Living Museum Space – The Vienna State Opera Safety Curtain'', Vienna: Verlag für moderne Kunst 2017.Cf
Exhibition catalogue "CURTAIN – VORHANG"
mip.at. * museum in progress (Publisher): ''Modularer Katalog – 10 Jahre museum in progress'', 3 vol., Vienna, 2000. * Gregor Auenhammer: ''Nicht auf die Größe kommt es an''. Großartiges und Unvermutetes aus Österreich. Vienna: Metroverlag, 2013, pp. 56–58. * Cathrin Pichler, Roman Berka (Publisher): ''TransAct''. Transnational Activities in the Cultural Field. Interventionen zur Lage in Österreich. museum in progress, Edition Transfer, Vienna, New York: Springer, 2010. * Stella Rollig (Publisher): ''Reise zu den Quellen'', 2 vol., Vienna, 1994. * Johannes Schlebrügge (Publisher): ''Safety Curtain 1. Kara Walker'', published by museum in progress in co-operation with Vienna State Opera, Vienna: P & S, 2000. * Johannes Schlebrügge (Publisher): ''Safety Curtain 2. Christine & Irene Hohenbüchler'', published by museum in progress in co-operation with Vienna State Opera, Vienna: P & S, 2001. * Vienna Chamber of Labour, museum in progress (Ed.): ''Arbeitswelten / Worlds of Work'', Vienna, 2005. * Vienna Chamber of Labour, Roman Berka (Ed.): ''Kunst – Arbeit – Gesellschaft'', Vienna, 2016, pp. 68–79. * Tobias Wall: ''Das unmögliche Museum''. Zum Verhältnis von Kunst und Kunstmuseen der Gegenwart, Bielefeld: transcript, 2006, pp. 264–269. * Vitus H. Weh: ''museum in progress'', in: Museum der Wünsche useum of Desires on the occasion of the exhibition from 10 September 2011 until 8 January 2012 in Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Vienna: distanz 2011, pp. 129–132. * Deborah Wye, Wendy Weitman: ''Eye on Europe. Prints, Books & Multiples / 1960 to Now'', on the occasion of the exhibition from 15 October 2006 until 1 January 2007 in

, New York, 2006, pp. 173, 180, 212–213, 280.

References

External links

* {{Authority control Art societies Culture in Vienna Organisations based in Vienna 1990 establishments in Austria Arts organizations established in 1990 Arts in Austria