MAK – Museum of Applied Arts

The MAK – Museum of Applied Arts (German: Museum für angewandte Kunst) is an arts and crafts museum in Vienna’s 1st district Innere Stadt, located at Stubenring 5. Aside from its usual concentration on arts and crafts and design, the museum is particularly interested in architecture and modern art.Since 1871, the museum has existed at its current site. The permanent exterior installation “MAKlite” by American artist James Turrell has lighted the structure in the nights since 2004. When it acquired van den Dorpel’s screensaver “Event listeners” in 2015, the MAK became the first museum to utilize bitcoin to acquire art. The MAK has the biggest online collection among Austrian Federal Museums, with approximately 300.000 pieces available online. This museum’s audio guide is available as a web-based app.

According to Heinrich von Ferstel’s ideas, a new museum complex for the Imperial Royal Museum of Art and Industry was erected at Stubenring 5 in the Neo-Renaissance style beginning in 1869. Ferdinand Laufberger created a sgraffito frieze and fresco paintings on the staircase’s mirror vault. The museum opened to the public on November 15, 1871, with a grand opening. It was the first museum structure built on the Vienna Ring Road. Because Laufberger’s drawings were destroyed, the mural painting of the figures on the exterior façade was reproduced around 1893 by pupils of Karl Karger of the School of Applied Arts. In 1875, the Austrian Museum was joined by a new building for the School of Applied Arts at Stubenring 3, also designed by Heinrich von Ferstel. It first opened its doors in 1877.

Ludwig Baumann planned an additional building for the museum on Weiskirchnerstraße 3 in 1906, which was completed in 1908. Repairs to the museum building caused by World War II lasted until 1949.

The museum’s historic buildings were completely renovated in 1989, and construction of a two-story subterranean depot and a connected wing with a spacious storage facility and extra display space began. The museum reopened in 1993 after undergoing renovations. Artists such as Barbara Bloom, Eichinger or Knechtl, Günther Förg, Gangart, Franz Graf, Jenny Holzer, Donald Judd, Peter Noever, Manfred Wakolbinger, and Heimo Zobernig created its showrooms. In 2014, the Permanent Collection Carpets underwent a repositioning with an artistic intervention by Füsun Onur, as did the Permanent Collection Asia, whose artistic design was assigned to Tadashi Kawamata in 2014 and 2016.

The Weiskirchnerstraße building houses temporary exhibits, while the Stubenring rooms house permanent collections and the MAK DESIGN LAB.