Jahresbericht 2011 - Presse - Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien

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khm, museum oF ethnology and austrIan theatre museum, 2011
ambras castle
in addition to the annual exhibition programme, from
January onwards a project entitled Das Eigene & das
Fremde (“Familiar and Foreign”) was organised in
Ambras castle involving children, young people and
adults with or without a migration background. The
Primary School in Hall, Unterer Stadtplatz, the BrG
Adolf Pichler Platz, the BFi, the innsbruck refugee centre
and the Ankyra Association participated. Topics such as
foreignness, integration, cultural exchange etc. were
studied and explored in the form of workshops and
in direct analysis with the collections in Ambras
(foreign/exotic objects in the collection of Sculpture and
Decorative Arts; war-related items/spoils of war in the
armoury). Artistic works created by the participants
during the project were presented in an exhibition.
lIbrary
in cooperation with the Sonnberg prison the project
“Sonnberg i“ was continued with the aim of supporting
the re-socialisation of fringe groups by involving them in
book-binding as well as simple conservation work. As
part of the preparations for the Gustav Klimt exhibition
in 2012, external restoration work was carried out on
six of Gustav Klimt’s transfer sketches for the spandrel
and intercolumniation pictures on the staircase of the
Kunsthistorisches Museum.
archIVes
Besides dealing with current enquiries and the regular
participation in the jours fixes of the commission for
Provenience research, research related to Jan Vermeer
van Delft’s The Artist’s Studio was brought to a close.
The committee of the commission for Provenience
research decided in its meeting on 18 March 2011 not
to recommend returning the painting. A partial autopsy
was made in the Kunsthistorisches Museum’s library of
the books acquired between 1933 and 1945 so that a
workshop report could be compiled. in April 2011 a
presentation of facts concerning objects from the
Valentine Springer collection and in December 2011 a
supplementary dossier on objects from the Siegfried
Fuchs collection was submitted to the commission for
Provenience research. in the summer of 2011 the two
researchers on provenience began to work on systematic
provenience research in the collection of Sculpture and
Decorative Arts.
scIentIFIc laboratory
in 2010 permission was given for the mobile XrF (X-ray
fluorescence) spectrometer to go into service and so in
2011 studies were able to go ahead in full. After rapidly
overcoming some fundamental problems in the analysis
or in the evaluation of the spectres, the first quantitative
analyses were possible. Attention was focused on the
analysis of glass and enamel – materials which because
of the high percentage of light elements (na – Si), whose
signals are strongly absorbed in the air – are difficult to
analyse as a whole. By using the vacuum chamber of the
XrF spectrometer PArT ii (Portable Art Analyser) it is
however possible, with the relevant reading times, to
detect sodium, at least down to an na o percentage
2
of 13 %. Two X-ray tubes, molybdenum (Mo) and chromium
(cr) are available for the analyses.
museum oF ethnology
in 2011 a decision was taken concerning the new
appointment of a director for the Museum of ethnology
from May 2012, thus paving the way for a new orientation
of this important museum. The decision was made
after it finally became clear that the Museum of Folklore
had no intention of joining the Museum Group. on the
basis of knowledge gained from the discussion process
lasting several years concerning the Museum Neu, the
complete re-furbishing of the public collection and a
new positioning as regards content have highest priority
here.
in 2011 the Museum of ethnology also organised a series
of outstanding exhibitions which were remarkable
because they contained hardly any loans but primarily
displayed the museum’s own objects. This again showed
the impressive variety and richness of the collection.
113 events of a very varied nature, ranging from guided
tours by experts, lectures, discussions about objects,
book presentations, as well as evenings of music and
dance performances, and also several workshops were
organised which in total were attended by almost
5000 visitors. in December, in cooperation with the
organisation Médecins sans Frontières, the touching multimedia
installation Starved for Attention was presented.
The education programme was also intensified in 2011.
in cooperation with the Department of the Didactics of
Political education at the University of Vienna this included
further education in the form of a workshop on the subject
Museum as a place of learning, and in cooperation
with icoM Austria, a lecture by the renowned educationalist
George Hein.
one of the highlights of the academic events organised
during the year was the conference held in September,
True ‘Culture’? Cultural Heritage, Re-vitalisation and the
Renaissance of the Idea of Culture.
The Museum of ethnology fosters increasingly intensively
the international exchange with other museums and
is committed to several projects subsidised by the eU,
including RIME (international network of ethnographic
museums), which deals with future perspectives of
ethnology museums. Moreover, together with the
colleagues from the Museo nazionale Preistorico
etnografico Luigi Pigorini in rome, the Musée du quai
Branly in Paris and the royal Museum of Africa in
Tervuren, Belgium, another eU project was successfully
started: ReadMe, in which the curators of the museums,
including the active participation of representatives of
migrant communities, critically analyse the inclusion of
the subject of migration in ethnographic museum work.
At the end of the year an eU-sponsored training
programme (ICD – MUSE) was introduced, which is
taken care of by the Museum of Foundational Works
in Ankara and which is concerned with the expert
exchange of information and transfer of knowledge
between the partner museums in romania and Turkey as
well as the Museum of ethnology.
The cooperation with museums and communities in the
countries of origin of the collections was continued.
one highlight was the loan to the Te Papa Tongarewa
Museum in new Zealand for an exhibition organised
together with the Maori confederation Tainui Waka
Alliance in the form of a historically valuable Maori
chieftain head-dress. intensive progress was also made
in the bi-national research and conservation project on
the ancient Mexican feather headdress. on a trip to Brazil
contacts with the Warí and Kanoê were intensified. cooperation
with the nigerian museums was realised in
support for the production of the African Lace exhibition
in Lagos. Discussions on the shared cultural heritage
in the context of the Benin art treasures were also
continued this year in the Berlin Museum of ethnology.
sub-saharan aFrIca
Thanks to John D. Marshall’s generous support it was
possible to purchase for the museum a Korobla helmet
mask from the ivory coast. its zoomorphic shape – with
the mouth of a crocodile, the tusks of a warthog, the
ears of a hyena as well as the chameleon figure on the
crown – refers to animals which play an important role in
the myths surrounding the foundation of the Senufo.
The Korobla type of mask was created to banish negative
forces as a response to the social upheavals in the course
of colonialism and the founding of the state in the
densely populated northern part of ivory coast which is
organised on a peasant structure.
north aFrIca, mIddle east, central asIa
and sIberIa
in 2011 activity was focused on planning, designing and
supervising the special exhibition Wald / Baum / Mensch.
As a contribution to the “international Year of the
Forest”, in three thematic axes (the forest of fantasy/the
disenchanted forest/the maltreated forest) and by means
of the objects on display, this exhibition aimed to
approach the phenomenon of the forest and everything
related to it.
east asIa
in 2010 the department of east Asia in the Museum
of ethnology received a collection from the legacy of
eva Sock; she had inherited it from her uncle, Dr. Anton
Walk (1901–1933), who spent the last years of his life
in Shanghai.
The collection comprises 21 objects, and the way they
are compiled is typical for a collection created at the
beginning of the 20th century. objects made of jade,
varnish, cloisonné, porcelain and bronze are to be seen.
Particularly outstanding is the food bowl fu from the
Bronze Age, whose companion piece is in a museum in
the Peoples’ republic of china.
south and south-east asIa, hImalayas
Work was carried out on the research project Mongolic
Ethnographica of the Austrian Collector Hans Leder
in European Museums (in the context of the grant
programme forMuse) financed by the Federal Ministry of
Science and research. in connection with field research
in nagaland, attempts were made on the basis of photos
of objects from the naga collection of the museum
to investigate their significance in the context of the
traditional culture. During the course of this journey
an extensive collection was set up about the cultural
transformation of the naga.