Change of Perspective

The Community Gallery is where the Wien Museum invites the city’s residents to make their concerns and perspectives visible. It is intended as a space for encounter and exchange, where learning from and with one another takes center stage.

Our first project was developed together with a diverse group of eleven women. They were participants in a series of workshops on creative and autobiographical writing. The objects and stories at four of the Wien Museum’s locations provided the women with creative input to discuss and reflect on their own histories and life situations. How do personal experiences overlap with the official narrative of the city? Which stories remain untold? Presented here are some of the observations that came out of this process.

Over many hours spent working together, close bonds were formed within the group. And so, we look forward to coming together again, this time with the women themselves taking on the role of curator. This follow-up project will focus on objects taken from their daily lives; objects connected to stories that represent the worlds they live in. As these items enter the museum’s collection, so the women become authors of the city’s material history.

Curators Ümit Mares-Altinok, Frauke Kreutler, Michaela Kronberger, Nathaniel Prottas
Co-curators Rania Alhaddad, Souzi Idris, Ildikó Nemes, Hera Perizad, Nadja Reichert, Dagmar Urban
Exhibition Design Mark and Hamann
Graphic Design Caterina Krüger