20 art exhibitions to see in Vienna this summer 2025
Vienna, the Austrian capital renowned for its rich cultural heritage, is a treasure trove of extraordinary art institutions. Just a short journey from London, it’s the perfect summer destination for art lovers eager to explore a vibrant mix of historic and contemporary exhibitions. From the world-famous Albertina and Belvedere museums, showcasing masterpieces by classical artists like Klimt and Schiele alongside modern works, to cutting-edge spaces like Kunsthalle Wien and Belvedere 21 presenting radical modernism, feminist art, and experimental installations, as well as Vienna’s pioneering eco-friendly Kunst Haus Wien, which focuses on innovative architecture and design, the city offers a diverse array of exhibitions this summer, 2025. Whether you’re interested in timeless classics, bold contemporary movements, or thought-provoking new media, here is your guide to the must-see exhibitions shaping the city’s cultural landscape this summer.
Radical! Women* Artists and Modernism 1910-1950
Claude Cahun, I Am in Training Don’t Kiss Me, 1927 (2024) Jersey Heritage Collections
#FLODown: Radical! Women* Artists and Modernism 1910-1950 at Lower Belvedere explores how over sixty women* artists from more than twenty countries challenged artistic and social conventions during the early 20th century. The exhibition presents a wide range of works, including paintings, sculptures, textiles, prints, photographs, and films, that reflect these artists’ search for new forms of expression and representation. Moving beyond traditional categories, the show highlights their determination to push boundaries and redefine Modernism, often despite resistance. Featuring key figures like Sonia Delaunay, Käthe Kollwitz, Tamara de Lempicka, Claude Cahun, Elizabeth Catlett, Hannah Höch, Leonor Fini, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, and Alice Neel, Radical! reveals the diverse and pioneering contributions women* made to shaping modern art, with themes that remain relevant today.
Belvedere note, in this exhibition “women*artists” is used as an inclusive term that encompasses a range of gender identities.
Date: 18 June – 12 October 2025. Location: Lower Belvedere, Rennweg 6, 1030 Vienna. Price: 18 EUR. Concessions available. Book now
Mika Rottenberg: Antimatter Factory
© NoNoseKnows, Mika Rottenberg. Antimatter Factory, KunstHausWien. Image credit Michael Goldgruber
#FLODown: Antimatter Factory by Mika Rottenberg at KunstHausWien presents a surreal, humorous and sharply critical exploration of global capitalism, ecological collapse and the absurdities of modern labour. Featuring films, kinetic sculptures and installations from 2003 to 2024 including her newest Lampshares series, Rottenberg constructs immersive, fantastical worlds where fingers grow from walls, plastic mushrooms sprout and meals are sneezed into being. Drawing on science, particularly her collaboration with CERN, and inspired by Marxist ideas of labour and material flow, she dismantles myths of productivity, value and control. Her disorienting yet seductive visual language moves fluidly between fiction and reality, confronting the logic of overproduction, industrial waste and alienation in a hyper capitalist world, prompting us to reconsider how we relate to work, bodies and the environment.
Date: 27 February – 10 August 2025. Location: Kunst Haus Wien, Untere Weißgerberstraße 13, A‑1030 Vienna, Austria Price: 16 EUR. Concessions available. Book now
Park McArthur: Contact M
Park McArthur. Contact M at mumok: Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Vienna. Installation view of Passive Vibration Isolation 4, 2014, Softly, Effectively, 2017, Missions, 2025, and Black & White Plaid Commode, Breakfast Commode, Pink Love Commode, Calvin Klein Commode, 2014.Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Simon Vogel.
#FLODown: Park McArthur’s exhibition brings together works from the 2010s to 2020s that rethink ideas of independence, access, and how physical spaces affect the way people experience art. Shown simultaneously at mumok in Vienna and Museum Abteiberg in Mönchengladbach, the exhibition includes interventions such as temporary ramps, disabled parking signs, and a Wikipedia entry on disabled activist Marta Russell. By presenting the show in two locations at once, McArthur challenges the idea that art can only be experienced fully in one place, and invites reflection on how bodies and environments influence one another. Her work highlights how structures meant to assist can also reveal deeper social and cultural assumptions about ability and presence.
Date: 15 March - 7 September 7, 2025. Location: mumok, Vienna & Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach (simultaneous exhibition). Price: from 17 EUR. Concessions available. Book now
Henri Cartier-Bresson: Watch! Watch! Watch!
Henri Cartier-Bresson Coronation of King George VI, London, England, 12 May 1937 C Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson/ Magnum Photos
#FLODown: This major retrospective at FOTO ARSENAL WIEN offers a comprehensive look at the life and work of Henri Cartier-Bresson, one of the most influential photographers of the twentieth century. The exhibition presents 240 works, including iconic images, early surrealist-inspired photographs, lesser-known pieces, and never-before-shown films and photo essays. Cartier-Bresson, cofounder of Magnum Photos and pioneer of street photography, is renowned for his concept of the “decisive moment”, capturing fleeting scenes that reveal deeper truths about everyday life and human behaviour. His photography spans pivotal moments in world history, from Gandhi’s funeral to post-war Europe, and includes striking portraits of cultural figures like Coco Chanel and Henri Matisse. Drawing on works from the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson and presented in collaboration with major European institutions, this is the first substantial Cartier-Bresson retrospective in Austria in decades and a vital tribute to his lasting legacy.
Date: 28 June - 21 September 2025 Location: FOTO ARSENAL WIEN, Museumsplatz 1, 1070 Vienna, Austria. Price: from 10 EUR. Concessions available. Book now
Maria Hahnenkamp
Installation view "Maria Hahnenkamp", Belvedere 21. Photo: Johannes Stoll / Belvedere, Vienna
#FLODown: At Belvedere 21, Maria Hahnenkamp’s first major institutional solo exhibition presents around 100 works, including photographs, slide projections, video pieces, installations, and in-situ wall drillings within an architectural setting by Walter Kräutler. A central figure in Austrian contemporary art since the late 1980s, Hahnenkamp is known for her feminist and media-critical approach to photography, questioning how images are constructed and consumed. Her work draws attention to absence, surface, materiality, and the politics of looking, often disrupting visual norms through subtle interventions. This exhibition offers a compelling insight into her decades-long practice and its continued relevance today.
Date: 21 March 2025 - 31 August 2025. Location: Belvedere 21,Arsenalstraße 1, 1030 Vienna, Austria. Price: 9.90 EUR. Concessions available. Book now
Remix: From Gerhard Richter to Katharina Grosse
Isa Genzken, Dedicated to the Statue of Liberty, 2015, 190 × 50 × 50 cm, Plaster, paint, mirror foil, plastic, MDF. Viehof Collection © Bildrecht, Vienna 2025. Jens Ziehe
#FLODown: REMIX: From Gerhard Richter to Katharina Grosse, on show at Albertina Modern in Vienna, explores the development of German painting and sculpture from the 1960s to today. Featuring 24 key artists from the Viehof Collection, including Joseph Beuys, Gerhard Richter, Katharina Grosse and Isa Genzken, the exhibition contrasts bold expressive works with conceptual and experimental pieces. It combines loans from the Viehof Collection with the Albertina’s own holdings to reveal fresh perspectives on postwar and contemporary German art, while introducing rarely seen works by Corinne Wasmuht, Karin Kneffel and Nairy Baghramian.
Date: 11 April - 7 September 2025. Location: Albertina Modern, Karlsplatz 5, 1010 Vienna, Austria. Price: 15.90 EUR. Concessions available. Book now
WATER PRESSURE: Designing for the Future
WATER PRESSURE. Designing for the Future © kunst-dokumentation.com/MAK
#FLODown: WATER PRESSURE: Designing for the Future, on show at the MAK – Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna, addresses the urgent global challenges of water scarcity, pollution, and inequality through the lens of design, art, architecture, and science. Divided into five thematic chapters, Water Stories, Bodily Waters, Thirsty Cities, Invisible Water, and Ecosystems, the exhibition explores water’s cultural, ecological, and political significance while presenting visionary solutions for a more just and sustainable water future.
Date: 21 May - 7 September 2025. Location: Upper Exhibition Hall at MAK, Stubenring 5, 1010 Vienna, Austria. Price: from 15.50 EUR. Concessions available. Book now
The World of Tomorrow Will Have Been Another Present
Exhibition view The World of Tomorrow Will Have Been Another Present, May 23, 2025 to April 6, 2026. Julio González, Femme assise II, 1936, Anita Witek, The Collector’s Room, 2025, Juan Gris, Carafe, verre et journal, 1919. Fernand Léger, Nature morte aux fruits, 1972. Photo: © Klaus Pichler/mumok
#FLODown: Five large-scale installations by Nikita Kadan, Barbara Kapusta, Frida Orupabo, Lisl Ponger, and Anita Witek enter into conversation with classical modernist works from mumok’s collection, connecting the 1920s with the 2020s through the shared lens of time. Kadan examines war and memory by juxtaposing monuments with contemporary reflections on violence. Kapusta presents monumental aluminium sculptures that question strength and vulnerability in body images across eras. Orupabo confronts colonial legacies by contrasting racialised and sexualised female figures with early European sculptures. Ponger reveals how museums shape perceptions and perpetuate stereotypes through the display and presentation of art. Witek reconstructs photographic backgrounds to create new visual narratives, linking fragments of modernity with the present. The exhibition weaves historical and contemporary perspectives to reveal how identity, history, and societal norms continually shape one another.
Date: 23 May 2025 - 6 April 2026. Location: mumok, Vienna & Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach (simultaneous exhibition). Price: from 17 EUR. Concessions available. Book now
Ibrahim Mahama: Zilijifa
Courtesy Redclay; Ibrahim Mahama; White Cube, Hong Kong/London/New York/Paris/Seoul; and APALAZZOGALLERY, Brescia
#FLODown: Ibrahim Mahama’s first solo exhibition in Austria will open this month at Kunsthalle Wien’s MuseumsQuartier, presenting a powerful new body of work that examines the colonial and post-colonial legacy of Ghana’s railway system. Central to the show is a striking installation, a full-size diesel locomotive supported by thousands of enamel headpans, traditional vessels used to carry goods in Ghana. These battered, well-used pans serve as a poignant metaphor for the heavy physical and historical burdens borne by Ghanaian labourers. Alongside the installation, a series of photographs, including over 100 X-rays revealing spinal deformities, highlight the toll of this labour on the human body. Through these works, Mahama offers a compelling critique of how colonial infrastructure was built on the backs of the exploited, bringing history and its consequences vividly into the present.
Date: 7 July - 2 November 2025. Location: Kunsthalle Wien MuseumsQuartier, Museumsplatz 1, 1070 Vienna. Price: 12 EUR. Concessions available. Book now
Kazuna Taguchi: I’ll never ask you
Exhibition view Kazuna Taguchi : I’ll never ask you, 13 June 13 - 16 November 2025. Photo: © Klaus Pichler/mumok
#FLODown: mumok presents Kazuna Taguchi’s first solo museum exhibition outside Japan, featuring enigmatic black-and-white photographs that blur the boundaries between painting and photography. Drawing from a wide range of image sources, from art history to personal archives, her work revisits and reworks fragments of the female body, gestures, and gazes, capturing moments suspended between presence and disappearance. Central to the exhibition is The Eyes of Eurydice (2019–), inspired by the myth of Eurydice, alongside a new series responding to Lucio Fontana’s exploration of pictorial space. Taguchi’s layered, repetitive process creates haunting images that embody the Japanese aesthetic of yūgen, emphasising subtlety, mystery, and the spaces beyond what is immediately visible.
Date: 13 June - 16 November 2025. Location: mumok – Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien Museumsplatz 1 1070 Vienna, Austria. Price: from 17 EUR. Concessions available. Book now
HITO STEYERL: Humanity Had the Bullet Go In Through One Ear and Out Through the Other
Hito Steyerl, Hell Yeah We Fuck Die, 2016 Video installation (Edition 6/7) © kunst-dokumentation.com/MAK
#FLOLondon: Berlin-based artist, filmmaker, and author Hito Steyerl brings her first solo exhibition to Vienna with Humanity Had the Bullet Go In Through One Ear and Out Through the Other, on show at the MAK – Museum of Applied Arts. Taking its title from a 1918 quote by Karl Kraus, the exhibition explores the political undercurrents of contemporary culture through two key works: the 2016 multimedia installation Hell Yeah We Fuck Die, which captures a sense of crisis through language drawn from pop music charts, and a new video installation from 2025 that investigates the cultural and social dimensions of artificial intelligence.
Date: 25 June 2025 - 11 January 2026. Location: MAK Contemporary, 5, 1010 Vienna, Austria. Price: from 15.50 EUR. Concessions available. Book now
Damien Hirst: Drawings
Damien Hirst, Beautiful Temporarily Lost At Sea Drawing, 2008. 47 × 42 cm, 47 × 42 cm. Photographed by Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd © Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. All rights reserved/ Bildrecht, Wien 2025
#FLODown: Offering an intimate look at Damien Hirst’s lesser-known works on paper, Damien Hirst: Drawings is on show at Albertina Modern in Vienna, presenting a rare exploration of the artist’s drawing practice and revealing it as central to his creative process. Spanning from the 1980s to today, the exhibition showcases sketches, studies, and finished drawings that informed or followed some of his most iconic works. Highlights include pieces from Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable, drawings made with Hirst’s custom-built spinning machine from his Making Beautiful Drawings installation, and selected sculptures and paintings that contextualise his ideas across media. The show invites visitors to reconsider the role of drawing in Hirst’s broader artistic vision.
Date: 7 May - 12 October 2025. Location: Albertina Modern, Karlsplatz 5, 1010 Vienna, Austria. Price: 19.90 EUR. Concessions available. Book now
Brigitte Kowanz: Light Is What We See
Brigitte Kowanz, Morse code alphabet, 1998, Variable dimensions, Fluorescent lamps, acrylic glass tubes, lacquer, ESTATE BRIGITTE KOWANZ © Estate Brigitte Kowanz / Bildrecht, Vienna 2025. Photo: Ulrich Ghezzi
#FLODown: Brigitte Kowanz’s retrospective Light Is What We See, opening 18 July 2025 at Albertina Museum, Vienna, explores her lifelong fascination with light, an element that reveals the world while remaining invisible itself. Spanning works from the 1980s onwards, the exhibition showcases her signature light-based installations in custom mirrored environments that multiply reflections infinitely or use black lights to make the unseen visible. Highlights include iconic pieces like Morsealphabet and Email 02.08.1984 03.08.1984, which engage with themes of digitisation and the information age.
Date: 18 July - 9 November 2025. Location: Albertina Museum, Karlsplatz 5, 1010 Vienna, Austria. Book now
Nicola L.
Saul Steinberg, The Americans - Main street - Small town (1958). Photo: Jelle Van Seghbroeck, © The Saul Steinberg Foundation SABAM Belgium, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels.
#FLODown: If you didn’t catch the Nicola L. exhibition at Camden Art Centre in London, it has fortunately travelled to Vienna and is now on show at Kunsthalle Wien. This is the first major retrospective of her work in Europe, bringing together sculpture, performance, painting, film, and design from 1964 to 2014. The exhibition features her pénétrables, textile sculptures made to be entered by visitors, alongside archival material from key performances, a reconstruction of the large-scale installation Fur Room (1969), and furniture shaped like human forms. Also included are paintings on bedsheets dedicated to women whose lives ended in violence, and films focusing on figures such as Abbie Hoffman and the punk band Bad Brains. The exhibition reflects Nicola L.’s sustained interest in the body, participation, and political presence in everyday forms.
Date: 27 June - 14 September 2025. Location: Kunsthalle Wien MuseumsQuartier, Museumsplatz 1, 1070 Vienna. Price: price: 12 EUR. Concessions available. Book now
Travels: Artists on the Move
Thomas Ender | The Matterhorn seen from the Gornergrat, 1854 | THE ALBERTINA MUSEUM, Vienna © Photo: THE ALBERTINA MUSEUM, Vienna
#FLODown: Travels: Artists on the Move at Albertina Museum explores the link between travel and artistic inspiration in the 18th and 19th centuries. Drawing from the museum’s own collection, the exhibition presents works ranging from grand tours to personal journeys, highlighting the diverse landscapes and motifs that captured artists’ imaginations. Through delicate drawings and vivid watercolours by figures such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Caspar David Friedrich, Jakob Alt, Thomas Ender, and Tina Blau, the show conveys a sense of the era’s yearning for new horizons, encounters with nature, and the varied conditions of travel that influenced their creative expression.
Date: 27 June – 24 August 2025. Location: ALBERTINA Museum, Albertinaplatz 1, 1010 Vienna, Austria. Price: from 19.90 EUR. Concessions available.Book now
Changing Times: Egon Schiele’s Last Years, 1914–1918
Egon Schiele, Portrait of the Painter Albert Paris von Gütersloh, 1918 © The Minneapolis Institute of Art, Gift of the P. D. McMilian Land Company, Photo: The Minneapolis Institute of Art
#FLODown: The Leopold Museum presents a major monographic exhibition focusing on the final years of Egon Schiele’s life and work. Changing Times is the first exhibition to explore Schiele’s late oeuvre, created between 1914 and his untimely death in 1918 from the Spanish Flu at age 28. While Schiele is often celebrated for his early, introspective works, this exhibition highlights a shift in his artistic direction during a time marked by personal and historical upheaval. His style evolved to reflect external realities and new themes, moving beyond the intense self-examination of his earlier years.
Date: 28 March – 13 July 2025. Location: LEVEL -1, Leopold Museum, MuseumsQuartier, Museumsplatz 1, 1070 Vienna, Austria. Price: 17 EUR. Concessions available. Book now
Jonathan Monk: Limited Company
Installation view Jonathan Monk. Limited Company, Belvedere 21. Image credit Johannes Stoll / Belvedere, Vienna
#FLODown: Limited Company at Belvedere 21 is the British artist Jonathan Monk’s first solo museum exhibition in Austria, bringing together a selection of works that rework and question the legacy of Conceptual and Minimal Art. Known for his blend of homage and irony, Monk appropriates and reinterprets art historical references to challenge ideas of originality, authorship, and the exhibition system itself. The show includes murals, paintings, sculptures, and photographs, all engaging with repetition, doubling, and serialism. A custom-made curtain, printed with images from Monk’s earlier projects, responds directly to the museum’s architecture and sets the tone for a series of carefully selected works that relate to it in both direct and subtle ways.
Date: 23 May - 21 September 2025. Location: Belvedere 21,Arsenalstraße 1, 1030 Vienna, Austria. Price: 9.90 EUR. Concessions available. Book now
Powerful Patterns: Meisen Kimonos from the MAK Collection
POWERFUL PATTERNS: Meisen Kimonos from the MAK Collection—A Friis Donation © MAK/Stella Riessland
#FLODown: To mark the generous donation by Henriette Friis, the MAK presents Powerful Patterns: Meisen Kimonos from the MAK Collection, a vibrant exhibition featuring around 60 colourful kimonos and haoris from the early 20th century. Displayed in the Central Room of the MAK Design Lab, these pieces from the Taishō and Shōwa periods showcase distinctive “all over” patterns that reflect Japan’s cultural exchange with the West and its engagement with European modernity. Advances in silk production and dye technology made Meisen kimonos affordable and popular everyday wear for the “new woman” of the time.
Date: 12 March - 24 August 2025. Location: MAK, Stubenring 5, 1010 Vienna, Austria. Price: from 15.50 EUR. Concessions available. Book now
Biedermeier: The Rise of an Era
Francesco Hayez, Portrait of the Singer Matilde Juva Branca, 1851 © Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Milan, Photo: Comune di Milano - all rights reserved - Galleria d‘Arte Moderna, Milan
#FLODown: Biedermeier: The Rise of an Era, open at the Leopold Museum in Vienna, explores the Biedermeier period, a time marked by political upheaval and social change in Europe from around 1815 to 1848. It features approximately 190 works by over 70 artists, including paintings, watercolours, drawings, furnishings, glass, porcelain, dresses, and archival material. The exhibition highlights the rise of a confident bourgeoisie focusing on family life, security, and everyday harmony, alongside the flourishing of landscape painting. It presents not only Viennese masters but also artists from other important cities of the Habsburg Monarchy, such as Budapest, Prague, Ljubljana, Venice, and Milan, illustrating the era’s rich and diverse artistic production.
Date: 10 April – 27 July 2025. Location: Leopold Museum, Museumsplatz 1, 1070 Vienna. Price: 17 EUR. Concessions available. Book now.
Francesca Woodman
Works from the VERBUND COLLECTION, Vienna
Francesca Woodman | Self-Portrait Talking to Vince, c. 1976-77 | VERBUND COLLECTION, Vienna © Woodman Family Foundation / Bildrecht, Vienna 2025
#FLODown: The first museum exhibition of Italian-American artist Francesca Woodman in Austria is on show at the Albertina Museum. Featuring around 100 photographs from the Verbund Collection, this groundbreaking exhibition highlights Woodman’s early exploration of the female body and identity through striking black-and-white self-portraits created during her brief but intense nine-year career. It reveals her masterful use of props, light, and space to produce haunting, visionary images that continue to influence audiences decades after her untimely death.
Date: 4 April – 6 July 2025. Location: ALBERTINA Museum, Albertinaplatz 1, 1010 Vienna, Austria. Price: from 19.90 EUR. Concessions available. Book now
When visiting Vienna, the Vienna Card is an excellent choice, offering unlimited public transport and discounts on museum admissions. Alternatively, the Vienna Pass grants free entry to over 90 of the city’s top attractions and museums, and is available for durations ranging from 1 to 6 consecutive days.
