Vienna’s Long Night of Museums opens 124 venues

The 26th ORF Long Night of Museums will open 124 museums across Vienna from 6 p.m. on Oct. 3, with one ticket granting entry to all participating venues, ORF reported.

Visitors can collect information, booklets and tickets at Maria-Theresien-Platz, a square that serves as the event’s central meeting point. Tickets will also be available at participating museums. They cost EUR 19, or EUR 16 at the reduced rate. Children up to 12 years old can attend free.

Participating museums include the Kunsthistorisches Museum and Natural History Museum, the Museum of Applied Arts (MAK) and the Jewish Museum Vienna. The Museum of Society and Economy is taking part for the first time, offering interactive short workshops on consumer issues and finance, science demonstrations and brief tours on life and housing in Vienna.

Exhibitions and activities

The MAK will offer half-hour guided tours of its current exhibition by Thomas Demand, as well as access to “Borderland” and “A City Full of Posters,” an exhibition of advertising posters from the Vienna Design Week over the past 20 years. The painting “Quiet Hour” by Kateryna Lysovenko is on display in “Borderland.” Children and young people can make moths from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.

The Heeresgeschichtliches Museum, a military history museum, will focus on its new exhibition “Violence – Society. Austria in the Age of the World Wars, 1918 to 1955.” Half-hour tours will run from 6 p.m. to 11 p.m. Its “object speed dating” sessions will feature restorers presenting selected items and explaining their work. The exhibition connects military, violence and social history through 42 biographies.

At the Jewish Museum Vienna, visitors can meet Israeli artist Eran Shakine and hear about his current exhibition, which humorously explores similarities and differences among Judaism, Christianity and Islam. A short Hebrew course will also teach participants to write their names in Hebrew.

The Haus der Musik, an interactive music museum, will host hour-long concerts by the Wiener Klassik Ensemble at 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. in its glass-roofed courtyard. The programme includes works by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Joseph Haydn and Ludwig van Beethoven, as well as other pieces from the Viennese classical and musical traditions.

Tags: Vienna, museums, culture