12 February 2023

Vienna Insight by Fashion.at's Karin Sawetz: Preview of the exhibition themes of the new Prater Museum

Today on my cycling tour through the Viennese Prater, I came along the construction site of the new Prater Museum at the Strasse des Ersten Mai (named after the workers' holiday on 1 May) near the Wiener Riesenrad (Giant Ferris Wheel). The work on the energy saving building by architect Michael Wallraff was started last autumn in October 2022 and is planned to be finished in 2024. Passersby get a first impression of what they can expect to see on the three levels of the new museum, where artefacts from the current location, a small room in the Planetarium, and other objects from the collections of the museum network of the City of Vienna, the 'Wien Museum', will move next year.

At the press release, the curators of the Wien Museum provided a preview of the themes of the new Prater Museum's planned permanent exhibition, which follows the concept to offer low-threshold education at the highest academic level. A form of edutainment matching the context of the Wurstel Prater that can be accessed for free. The free entry is also an important topic for the architecture of the building. It's announced that visitors can access the ground floor, where a book shop is located, for free. The exhibition starts already on the ground floor with the 250 years history of the Prater and can be further explored (with admission fee) on the second and third floor, where stories about the Prater and entertainment from various perspectives like 'Theatricality and travesty', 'Artificial worlds of experience', or 'Body and desire' are planned to be told.

Many of the objects come from former private collections; today they are part of the collection of the Wien Museum. They give insights into the aesthetics of the entertainment business like the visual design of posters, programs, or tickets, the development of attractions from figures of carousels and early slot machines to nowadays constructions of rides, the architecture of buildings from the world exhibition of 1873, the people behind the businesses like individual Prater entrepreneurs, people of the circus, of the varìété, or the theater in the Prater. A short preview of what the history of the Wiener Prater is made of can be found on the website wienerriesenrad.com/en/history/ of the Giant Ferris Wheel (built 1897) with illustrated insights such as the artistic performance of the Viennese woman Marie Kindl in 1898 - she hung with her teeth on a rope to raise awareness for the people's poverty, or Madame Solange d'Atalide's hazardous ride in 1914.

Image, selfie captured by Fashion.at's Karin Sawetz on 12 February 2023: The picture shows two of three images on one side of the fence of the construction site of the new Prater Museum, which will open in 2024. The men, two wrestlers and an athlete (not on view on this page), are known by name. The woman, a weightlifter, is not recorded in history by her name. The byline of the picture (translated title 'An unknown weightlifter') by photographer Josef Fibinger is as follows: "Josef Fibinger: Eine unbekannte Stemmerin, um 1900. Wien Museum."

At the picture left (not on view at the image above): Anton Paul Huber (photographer): Georg Jagendorfer (athlete), around 1890. Wien Museum. Right: Anton Paul Huber (photographer): The wrestlers Paul Pons from France and Michael Hitzler from Munich, around 1905. Wien Museum.