December 2017

Ms TAO-DU and Mr RICHARD have been particularly busy this year!
In time for the first Sunday of advent, both of them designed our unique advent wreath!

With a diameter of TWO (!) Metres  - around our fountain - it fills the whole room with a Christmassy fir fragrance!
Let yourself be enchanted...

In the renowned NEW YORKER travel magazine "Conde Nast Traveler", 300,000 readers voted:
VIENNA  -  as the most POPULAR CITY IN EUROPE!

FLORENCE landed in second place and BRUGES in third place, respectively.

In the international ranking, Vienna also scored very high and reached SECOND place – behind TOKYO!

At the change of year, the whole of Vienna is given over to partying and dancing. The New Year’s Eve Trail in the Old City is the highlight. A great ambience can be enjoyed as much at a gala dinner or festive ball as it can at a concert, the opera, in a hip club or a sophisticated bar.

Superb exhibitions and a dazzling array of events, concerts, operas, operettas and the hit musical "Dance of the Vampires" promise a New Year's Eve program brimming with excitement throughout the day and night.

On December 31, Vienna's old city center transforms into a giant party zone: From 2 p.m. in the afternoon to 2 a.m. the following morning, top entertainment is guaranteed by the New Year's Eve Trail in the city center, at City Hall Square and in the Prater. Along the New Year's Eve Trail, dozens of gastronomes serve you punch and culinary treats. Numerous areas provided entertainment with show programs, waltzes, operetta, rock, pop, DJ lines and hit music. The classical area on Graben is a popular fixture. Vienna's dance schools offer crash waltz dancing courses here during the afternoon and transform Graben into an idyllic open-air ballroom. A large firework display will be held on City Hall Square and in the Prater at midnight.

A unique New Year's atmosphere can also be enjoyed on a boat trip along the Danube, at the New Year’s Eve Ball at the Hofburg Vienna (Imperial Palace) and at New Year galas held in City Hall and the city's leading hotels. The "Majestic Imperator", a palace on rails, invites everyone to go on exclusive rides into the new year, while "Die Fledermaus" by Johann Strauss is performed in time-honored tradition at the Vienna State Opera and also broadcast live on the outdoor screen.

New Year's Day in Vienna will be greeted in classic fashion with a morning "hangover cure" brunch - featuring the Vienna Philharmonic's New Year's Day concert on a big screen - in front of City Hall (from 10 a.m.)
 

In Vienna, Johann Strauss' operetta "Die Fledermaus" belongs to New Year's Eve like the New Year's Concert of the Philharmonic belongs to the first day of the year. The change of year can also be musically shaped with Wagner, Beethoven or dancing vampires.

Two opera houses perform the popular operetta "Die Fledermaus" over the New Year period: The Volksoper (31 December and 1 January) and the Vienna State Opera (31 December, 1, 3 and 5 January). Michael Schade, Burgtheater actor Peter Simonischek and others perform here. Best of all: The State Opera Fledermaus will be screened live on the video wall in front of the Opera House on Karajan Platz from 7.00 pm, where it can be watched for free. From 2.00 pm and after the Fledermaus, an opera potpourri will be shown until 2.00 am in the morning. The performance is also available on the livestreaming channel of the Vienna State Opera.
At Theater an der Wien, opera fans can ring out the year with Wagner: An exciting new production of the Ring Trilogy will be performed (29 December: Hagen, 30 December: Siegfried, 31 December: Brünnhilde).
The most famous concert in the world - the New Year's Concert - is held in the Golden Hall of Vienna's Musikverein each year on 1 January (previews with an identical program on 30 and 31 December). Riccardo Muti takes his place at the conductor's stand in 2017/18. All tickets for this year's concerts have already sold out. Tickets for all three concerts are drawn early each year via the website of the Vienna Philharmonic. Despite this, there's no need to miss the New Year's Concert: That's because it's shown live on TV in 90 countries as well as on giant video walls both at the 'hangover breakfast' on City Hall Square and on the square in front of the Vienna State Opera.
Members of the Vienna Philharmonic can also be found amongst the Vienna Ring Ensemble. In the atmospheric Brahms Hall of the Musikverein, this formation plays another New Year's Eve concert of popular classical works in the guise of a chamber orchestra (30 and 31 December).
The Wiener Konzerthaus presents a packed musical New Year's program: The Wiener Symphoniker brings the year to a close with Beethoven's 9th Symphony (30 and 31 December, 1 January). In addition to this festive program, things continue in buoyant mood in the Grand Hall with the Janoska ensemble's New Year's Eve gala "The Big Mulatság" on 31 December. Accompanied by soprano Daniela Fally and Thomas Gansch on trumpet, it gets everyone in the right mood. The Strauss Festival Orchestra Vienna performs rousing polkas, waltzes and marches of the Strauss dynasty (28 and 29 December, 1 January).
On New Year's Eve, The best to end with promises musical variety across all genres: Performing at the MuTh – Concert Hall of the Vienna Boys' Choir are clarinetist Matthias Schorn, together with the legendary singer Will Resetarits, "Vienna's world-leading contrabass" Georg Breinschmid, the Finnish tango pianist Jarkko Riihimäki and the Wienerlied duo "Die Strottern".
The musicals Dance of the Vampires and I am from Austria offer an entertaining program for the change of year (daily except 1 January). Those seeking a combination of music and party simply have to follow the New Year's Eve Trail through the Old City.
 

We are all getting older. An exhibition at the Lower Belvedere address this socio-political topic and shows current and historic works on the topic of aging.

Society is changing, people are living longer. Despite everything, many people dream of eternal youth and the aging process continues to be seen as something negative. The exhibition "Aging Pride" at the Lower Belvedere shows how artists succeed in perceiving the opportunities and boundaries of aging in ways other than glorifying or being pessimistic about it. The presented works illustrate how all aspects of age can be integrated into our life in an appreciative way. Apart from negative stereotypes, however, age also indicates power, experience and worldly wisdom.

On display are works by high-ranking artists such as Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Oskar Kokoschka, Edgar Degas, Lucian Freud, Alfred Hrdlicka, Birgit Jürgenssen, Alex Katz, Anton Kolig, Käthe Kollwitz, Brigitte Kowanz, Maria Lassnig, Annie Leibovitz, Pablo Picasso, Arnulf Rainer, Elfie Semotan, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Max Weiler, Broncia Koller-Pinell, Aleah Chapin and many more besides.

Aging Pride, 17 November 2017 - 4 March 2018
www.belvedere.at

To mark its 150th anniversary, the University of Applied Arts Vienna presents itself in a major exhibition at the MAK – Austrian Museum of Applied Arts/Contemporary Art.

To celebrate the 150th year of existence of the University of Applied Arts Vienna, the major exhibition "Aesthetics of Change. 150 years of the University of Applied Arts Vienna" at the MAK – Austrian Museum of Applied Arts/Contemporary Art dives into the cosmos of one of the most traditional and visionary cultural universities in Austria. In a two-part exhibition, the anniversary show, a co-operation of the University of Applied Arts Vienna (UAAV) and the MAK, looks at the historically developed position of the UAAV as a leading competence center for artistic and scientific education and research.

In the exhibition section in the lower MAK exhibition hall, around 400 exhibits provide a view of the UAAV's prodigious output from a variety of perspectives. Speculatively and sometimes provocatively, contemporary positions in the upper MAK exhibition hall sketch the future of art and education against the backdrop of social and technological upheavals.

Thousands of biographies on art, architecture and design are now connected with the UAAV through teaching or studies. Its graduates form a mix of stars of art, architecture and design history – from Gustav Klimt to Oskar Kokoschka and Maria Lassnig, from Josef Frank to Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky and Hans Hollein – and names that were previously unknown to the wider public.
The history of the UAAV begins in 1867. It was in this year that Emperor Franz Joseph laid the foundation stone for a new institution of learning connected to the Royal and Imperial Austrian Museum of Art and Industry (today's MAK). In 1877, the school moved into the building newly constructed by Heinrich von Ferstel on Stubenring, right next to the museum. In 2018, the UAAV will additionally occupy two large, recently adapted buildings in the immediate vicinity of the Ringstrasse boulevard.

Aesthetics of Change. 150 Years of the University of Applied Arts Vienna, 15 December 2017 - 15 April 2018
www.mak.at

Victor Hugo was not only a gifted writer but also drew. The Leopold Museum now shows his works for the first time.

"The Hunchback of Notre Dame" and "Les Misérables" are masterpieces of the Romantic period and come from none other than Victor Hugo (1802-1885). What many people do not know is that the writer also pursued a passion for painting for decades. With his depictions of whimsical characters living on the fringes of society he paid tribute to Francisco de Goya, while his renderings of cathedrals and palaces are magical and sombre. Victor Hugo handled his painting materials with a seemingly limitless freedom: daubing with sepia, and at times using unconventional materials such as coffee dregs or dust, his approach was often quite random.

In total, Victor Hugo's oeuvre encompasses more than 4,000 drawings. The extensive exhibition in the Graphic Cabinet of the Leopold Museum shows around 80 of his works on paper. They are juxtaposed by the works of his pre-modern predecessors such as Alexander Cozens (1717-1786) and William Turner (1775-1851).

Victor Hugo. The Dark Romanticist, 17 November 2017 - 15 January 2018
www.leopoldmuseum.org