Guided Tour Join us on a journey through 3,000 years of trouser history from around the world. From the detailed replica of a pair of trousers over 3,000 years old – originally discovered in a tomb in China – to contemporary designer trousers, you will learn about over 50 pairs and the stories behind them. Whether wrapped, buttoned or tied – two separate openings for the feet are all that’s needed for a garment to be considered trousers. The production methods range from handwoven and zero...

Workshop for children & adults This open studio invites young and old alike to get creative together and design T-shirts. Our designs are inspired by the colourful huipiles – traditional blouses woven by indigenous women from Chiapas and Oaxaca in southern Mexico. You can discover these artistic garments in our current exhibition The Colours of the Earth as well as in the permanent exhibition. Using stamps by Mexican artist Stephany Daphne Rodríguez Cabañas, based on the typical...

Lisl Ponger The Master Narrative 25 October 2017 to 31 October 2019 At the invitation of the Weltmuseum Wien, the MuKul, the (fictitious) Museum for Foreign and Familiar Cultures is presenting an exhibition of works by artist Lisl Ponger. Visitors are invited to take part in an exploratory journey that starts out from six large-scale, staged photographs in light boxes and a 2-channel installation with the title The Master Narrative und Don Durito which lasts a full museum day. About the...

Science Fiction(s) If There Were a Tomorrow 30 March 2023 to 9 January 2024 With the highlight exhibition Science Fiction(s) , the Weltmuseum Wien presents speculative narratives for the future. With installations, paintings and films, the show looks at various ideas of the future. Cara Romero, The Zenith, 2022, Photograph. Printed by the artist on Legacy Platine paper © Cara Romero Find out everything you need to know about your visit. About the Exhibition About the Exhibition How do we shape...

The Scientific Legacy of René de Nebesky-Wojkowitz The project will provide a valuable contribution to the preservation and utilization of the legacy of the Austrian Tibetologist and ethnographer René de Nebesky-Wojkowitz (1923–1959) and highlight the importance of his pioneering and influential work on Tibetan religion and culture. Scheduled for four years, the project concentrates on his three travels to South Asia in the 1950s and on his academic work in Europe. René Nebesky-Wojkowitz und der...

Foreign language tours All our guided tours can also be booked in English, Spanish or French. The language in which a public tour is given can be agreed on the spot depending on availability. For further information please contact us at kulturvermittlung@weltmuseumwien.at Toutes nos visites guidées peuvent également être réservées en langue français, anglaise ou espagnole. La langue appliquée d’une visite publique peut être convenue sur place en fonction des besoins et des disponibilités. Pour...

Dust & Silk Steppe and Silk Roads 16 December 2021 to 3 May 2022 The exhibition Dust & Silk. Steppe and Silk Roads takes visitors on a fascinating journey through the past and the present, exploring connections between these historical routes and the “New Silk Road”. Silk textiles and ikat fabrics, tea, and “wild apples” made their way to Europe along these legendary historical trade routes, which also Marco Polo to travel across Asia. Nevertheless, there has never been such a thing as the Silk...

책거리 Chaekgeori Our shelves Our selves 21 April 2022 to 11 April 2023 On the occasion of the 130th anniversary of Austrian-Korean diplomatic relations, Weltmuseum Wien, in collaboration with outstanding Korean artists who created these works in recent years, is showing the exhibition 책거리 Chaekgeori - Our shelves Our selves in three gallery rooms. Book on Book 책속의 책, LEE Hwa Young 이화영 , 2021 © LEE Hwa Young 이화영 About the exhibition About the exhibition In Korea, chaekgeori (Korean: 책거리,...

The Majlis Cultures in Dialogue 17 September 2019 to 27 July 2020 The international travelling exhibition The Majlis - Cultures in Dialogue of the Sheikh Faisal Bin Qassim Al-Thani Museum in Doha, Qatar will be on show at the Weltmuseum Wien after its stops in Valletta and Paris. The Majlis has shaped the Arabic and Islamic people for centuries, serving as a centre for social encounters, for political debates and decisions, and for teaching and discussion. Technically defined as a ‘sitting...

Nomadic Artefacts By using Mongolian ritual objects from the collection of Weltmuseum Wien, the project follows and examines the movements of artefacts through various spatial, socio-political and institutional contexts. How are such ethnographic objects dealt with, what is their history and how are they exhibited? About the project About the project The project follows and examines the movements of artefacts, in this case Mongolian ritual objects, through various spatial, socio-political and...

The Colours of the Earth Modern Textile Art in Mexico 22 October 2025 to 6 April 2026 Buy Ticket With The Colours of the Earth. Modern Textile Art in Mexico, the Weltmuseum Wien presents an exhibition that offers a visual and sensory homage to the rich textile traditions of Mexico’s Indigenous communities. For more than seventeen years, dyeing workshops have been organized with weavers from thirty Indigenous communities in Oaxaca and Chiapas, Mexico. During this time, traditional dyeing and...

Japan in the Meiji era The collection Heinrich von Siebold 13 February to 11 August 2020 The Meiji era covers the period from 1868 to 1912 in Japanese history. This was a time when the feudal state was developing into a modern super power, when Japanese society was changing and opening up to the world. This still-unknown country aroused great interest in Europe. Heinrich von Siebold, the son of the doctor and famous researcher on Japan, Philipp Franz von Siebold, travelled to Japan as a teenager...

The feather headdress Introduction The famous quetzal feather headdress in the Weltmuseum Wien is the last of its kind. It is therefore of particular significance as world cultural heritage. It remains unclear exactly how and when it left Mexico. Here you can find answers to some of your questions about it and its history. Quetzalfeather-headdress, Mexico, Aztec, early 16th century © KHM-Museumsverband Información en español Provenance and History Provenance and History Before the early 16th...

Alma M. Karlin Alone Around the World 16 September 2021 to 18 January 2022 About the exhibition About the exhibition The writer Alma M. Karlin was born in 1889. Her birth town, Celje in modern-day Slovenia, was then dominated by the rift between Slovenian and German speakers and nationalism movements in the Habsburg Empire of the time, engendering a political narrow-mindedness that Karlin spent her entire life trying to escape. She studied several languages in London and embarked on a world...

Metamorphosis. Brazil 1998 Photography by Andrea Altemüller 5 December 2019 to 6 September 2020 The Brazilian rainforest is a contested cultural landscape, today more than ever. In 1998, the German photographer Andrea Altemüller travelled to Brazil, where she met people who transform raw materials from the rain forest in huge variety of ways and turned this into the two photo series Earth from my river and Deforestation of the rainforest. The exhibition Metamorphosis. Brazil 1998 is the first...

Participation in the Benin Dialogue Already in 2002, the intensive preparations for the exhibition Benin – Kings and Rituals. Court Arts from Nigeria , shown 2007 in Vienna, laid the foundations for the collaboration with the National Commission for Museums and Monuments Nigeria ( NCMM ). Pair of Busts: Oba (King) and Queen, Edo, Nigeria, 2006 In 2010, the NCCM, together with the Weltmuseum Wien, initiated an open dialogue to examine new joint perspectives on the difficult heritage of the...

Shannon Alonzo Washerwoman 16 May to 5 October 2025 Shannon Alonzo, Washerwoman, 2018, Mixed-Media-Installation, Courtesy of the artist Foto: © KHM-Museumsverband, Weltmuseum Wien Fotograf: Thomas Ritter ‘The piece has a life of its own. It ages over time.’ This is how Trinidad-born interdisciplinary artist Shannon Alonzo (b.1988) describes her mixed-media sculpture Washerwoman . The artist explores themes such as collective belonging and a sense of place. The organic materials of this striking,...

Inclusive offerings On one Tuesday every month, we offer an inclusive tour, alternating between a tactile tour for visually impaired and blind visitors and their companions and a tour with sign language interpretation (ÖGS/D) for deaf and hearing-impaired people. On one Thursday every month, we hold a workshop called “Es geht um die Welt“ (It’s about the world) for people with disabilities and their companions. If you do not belong to one of these groups of people, but still want to get to know...

ZukunftsKwizin In cooperation with the Brunnenpassage ZukunftsKwizin was a three-year participatory art project with young women. The more than seventy participants form a diverse group with many different life experiences and interests. Important questions addressed by this collaborative effort are flight, gender, identity, feminism and shaping the future. © Brunnenpassage About the project About the project ZukunftsKwizin opted for a critical transcultural and aesthetic approach to the topic...

Veiled, Unveiled! The Headscarf 18 October 2018 to 26 February 2019 Just a piece of cloth but laden with countless facets of meaning is causing a stir: the headscarf used by devout women to cover their head, their face, and occasionally their whole body. The religious duty of women to cover their head has been part of European culture for centuries, though. Its story begins with early Christianity and has remained a vibrant issue to this day. About the exhibition About the exhibition In the...

Dark Pairing Since 20 May 2021 The postcolonial view is the view of empathy and the desire to understand; (…) The postcolonial view recognizes and recognizes hybrid cultures and identities. - Paul Michael Lützeler © Wie-yi T. Lauw About the exhibition About the exhibition This recognition of the hybrid as well as the development of colonial cultures and history is the theme of T. Lauw in Dark Pairing by interweaving plants in a fine-meshed network. Images of cultural inscription and overlay...