4 May 2020

New opening dates of arts & crafts, fashion, furniture,... exhibitions at MAK Vienna

Officially it's allowed to re-open museums at the same time like restaurants, coffee houses,... in mid-May; excluded are still bars, night clubs or for example art performances where the distance of at least 1 meter (recommended are 1,5 meters) can't be kept. The new opening dates of the now temporarily closed museums and the new schedules for running or upcoming exhibitions are spread already online with more or less concrete plan and via press releases such as the one published recently by the MAK Museum of Applied Arts Vienna with detailed programme for the next months with foresight to next year.

The exhibition 'Women Artists of the Wiener Werkstätte' was planned to be on show from 27 May until 20 September this year. The research with included citizen science part (article) and preparation time for the exhibition was during the last weeks on hold. The new exhibition dates are according to the MAK press release 21 April until 3 October 2021.

The exhibition 'Show Off. Austrian Fashion Design.' which was developed from the curators' research on Austrian fashion design since the 70s/80s (article) will open again on 1st June and will be extended to the 30th August 2020.

On the same day (1st June) another MAK exhibition will be continued: 'Bentwood and Beyond. Thonet and Modern Furniture Design.' where light is thrown on the history of the in Vienna by German-born Michael Thonet (patented the bentwood technique) founded furniture company. 'Thonet' was a pioneer in serial production and created in the mid-19th century the bestselling chair No. 14. The chair is known as typical coffee-house or bistro chair; at the seat, Thonet used the in Vienna at that time popular 'Wiener Geflecht' weave. An anecdote from 1889 reports from the robustness of the chair. It's said that the chair fell from the Eiffel Tower 57 metres to the ground and survived the fall (source: thonet.de).


Image: Gebrüder Thonet, Chair, Model No. 14, Vienna, 1859 (Execution: 1890–1918). Photo: © MAK/Georg Mayer.



'Wiener Geflecht' related article: The pattern of the weave 'Wiener Geflecht' inspired German fashion designer Dawid Tomaszewski for Spring/Summer 2020 fashion and a collaborative home textiles collection with the Austrian company Betten Reiter.