MUMOK Vienna: Modern Art Museum in MuseumsQuartier

About MUMOK

MUMOK (Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien) is Austria’s largest museum for modern and contemporary art, housed in a distinctive dark-gray basalt-clad cube in Vienna’s MuseumsQuartier (7th district). Opened in 2001, the building—designed by Ortner & Ortner architects—deliberately contrasts with the surrounding Baroque Imperial Stables through its angular, fortress-like form wrapped in 13,000 basalt panels sourced from the Eifel region.

The museum holds over 10,000 works spanning 20th and 21st-century art: Pop Art (Warhol, Lichtenstein), Nouveau Réalisme (Yves Klein, Niki de Saint Phalle), Fluxus, Viennese Actionism (Brus, Nitsch, Schwarzkogler), Arte Povera, and significant holdings in photography, film, and video art. The collection emphasizes Central European avant-garde movements rarely spotlighted elsewhere—particularly Austrian art from the 1960s onward.
The museum does not display its entire collection at once—exhibits are rotated and curated thematically, meaning that what visitors see changes throughout the year.

Across five exhibition levels and approximately 4,800 m² / 51,700 ft² of display space, MUMOK rotates its permanent collection while hosting ambitious temporary exhibitions. The museum operates as both an archive of postwar radicalism and a laboratory for contemporary practice, with frequent artist talks, performances, and film screenings complementing the galleries.

MUMOK Details

• Location: Neubau (7th district), MuseumsQuartier
• Region: Vienna, Austria
• Address: Museumsplatz 1, 1070
• Entrance: Main Entrance (MuseumsQuartier)
• Opened: 2001 (21st century)
• Architectural Style: Contemporary (postmodern cube)
• Entrance fee: €14 adults; €11 reduced; free under 19; free first Sunday of each month
• Tickets: Available online and at the box office
• Opening hours: Tue–Sun 10:00–18:00; Thu 10:00–19:00; closed Mon (as of November 2025)
• Phone: +43 1 52500
• Transport: U2/U3 Volkstheater; U2 MuseumsQuartier; Tram 49 (Volkstheater)
• Accessibility: Full wheelchair access via lifts; wheelchairs available at entrance; accessible restrooms on all floors

Location

Current Exhibitions

• Collection Display — Thematic and rotating presentations drawn from the museum’s holdings in Pop Art, Viennese Actionism, Fluxus, and more. Selection changes regularly.
• Temporary Exhibitions — Major group and solo shows alternate several times a year; check the official website for current programs.
• Film & Video Program — Ongoing screenings in Cinema MUMOK and special artist film series.

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History & Development

MUMOK’s origins reach back to 1962 when the Museum des 20. Jahrhunderts opened in the Austrian Pavilion of the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair. This provisional space housed Austria’s growing collection of postwar art until the late 1970s, when German industrialist Peter Ludwig donated his Pop Art holdings—including significant works by Warhol, Lichtenstein, and Rauschenberg—on the condition that Vienna build a purpose-designed museum.

Planning for a new museum intensified after 1986, when the imperial stables complex (the former Hofstallungen) was earmarked for redevelopment as the MuseumsQuartier. Ortner & Ortner won the architectural competition in 1990 with a radical proposal: a monolithic basalt cube that refused nostalgia and historicist pastiche. Construction began in 1998; the building opened to the public on 14 September 2001, one week after the terror attacks in New York—an unintended but poignant synchronicity for a museum dedicated to 20th-century rupture.

The museum’s name honors the Ludwig donation while anchoring it in Austrian state ownership (Stiftung = foundation; Kunst = art; Moderner Kunst = modern art). Since 2001, MUMOK has expanded its collection through targeted acquisitions—feminist art, Eastern European avant-garde, and conceptual photography—positioning itself as Central Europe’s primary address for art from 1945 onward. The basalt facade has weathered to a deeper charcoal, embedding the building into the MuseumsQuartier’s social fabric while retaining its outsider stance.

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Highlights

Pop Art Collection. MUMOK holds one of Europe’s strongest Pop Art collections, though works are shown in rotation: Andy Warhol’s “Orange Car Crash” (1963), Roy Lichtenstein’s “Brushstroke” series, James Rosenquist’s immersive environments, and Claes Oldenburg’s soft sculptures. The Ludwig donation placed Vienna on the international Pop Art map overnight.

Viennese Actionism. The world’s most comprehensive archive of Austria’s notorious 1960s performance movement: Günter Brus, Hermann Nitsch, Otto Muehl, and Rudolf Schwarzkogler pushed painting into body, ritual, and transgression. Documentation, photographs, and ephemera reveal a movement still uncomfortable in its own country—MUMOK contextualizes rather than sanitizes.

Nouveau Réalisme. Yves Klein’s monochrome blue canvases, Niki de Saint Phalle’s shooting paintings, and Jean Tinguely’s kinetic machines anchor MUMOK’s French postwar holdings. Klein’s “ANT SU 10” (1960)—a large-scale blue sponge relief—remains a visitor touchstone.

Photography & Film Archive. Extensive holdings in conceptual photography (Cindy Sherman, Jeff Wall), Austrian documentary photography, and experimental film. The basement Cinema MUMOK screens rare works from the collection—often the only place to see certain Viennese avant-garde films outside archives.

The Building Itself. Ortner & Ortner’s architecture functions as both container and argument. The exterior rejects ornament; the interior inverts expectations with bright, column-free galleries flooded with artificial light (no windows above ground level). The design forces a break from Vienna’s imperial aesthetics—appropriately so for a museum of rupture.

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Why Visit?

MUMOK offers what Vienna’s older museums can’t: art that refused beauty, questioned authority, and embraced discomfort. Stand before Warhol’s car crash silkscreens—repetitive, deadpan images of American violence rendered as mass-produced wallpaper—and you encounter Pop Art not as kitsch nostalgia but as cultural critique. The Viennese Actionism rooms confront visitors with photographs and film stills documenting performances that mixed eroticism, scatology, and ritual: uncomfortable, historically specific, and impossible to ignore.

The museum’s curatorial approach rewards slow looking. Temporary exhibitions often reframe canonical movements—recent shows have interrogated Pop Art’s gender politics, traced Fluxus networks through Eastern Europe, and spotlighted feminist artists erased from Cold War-era histories. The permanent collection rotates quarterly, meaning repeat visits reveal different works and thematic constellations. MUMOK doesn’t chase blockbuster crowds; it assumes you’re willing to think.

Locals value MUMOK for its public program as much as its galleries. Thursday late nights (until 19:00) draw younger audiences; the museum café—spilling into the MuseumsQuartier courtyard—functions as a social hub. First Sunday free entry fills the building with families and students. Budget 90 minutes minimum for the collection highlights; three hours if you’re engaging deeply or catching a film screening. Pair it with Leopold Museum (Schiele, Klimt, Jugendstil) across the courtyard for a dialectic between Vienna’s decorative and radical modernisms.

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Ticket Discounts

Visit MUMOK for less with Vienna’s top city passes. The Vienna Pass gives free access to MUMOK and 70+ attractions citywide, plus skip-the-line entry. For flexible transport and discounted tickets to major sights, get the Vienna City Card (24h–72h) with unlimited public transport and museum savings. Both passes include free cancellation up to 24h before activation.