About

The Leopold Museum’s ONLINE COLLECTION currently features more than 1,400 image files of works from the Leopold Museum’s own collection and of permanent loans from private collections. The digital presentation spans the time from the Biedermeier period via Naturalism, Realism, Jugendstil and Expressionism all the way to New Objectivity. It comprises not only paintings and graphic works but also arts-and-crafts objects, for instance from the Wiener Werkstätte, including items of furniture, ceramic works, examples of glass art, jewelry as well as book and poster designs. Alongside works by exceptional protagonists, such as Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Oskar Kokoschka and Richard Gerstl, to name but a few, the database further features eminent exhibits by artists including Rudolf von Alt, Hans Makart, Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller, Olga Wisinger-Florian, Broncia Koller-Pinell, Tina Blau, Herbert Boeckl, Josef Hoffmann, Alfred Kubin, Anton Kolig, Albin Egger-Lienz, Koloman Moser, Max Oppenheimer, Otto Wagner and Adolf Loos, as well as examples of international art by Gustave Courbet, Wilhelm Lehmbruck, George Minne, Auguste Rodin, Ferdinand Hodler, Franz von Stuck and many others.

The short descriptions on select chief works reflect the latest state of research, while new video and audio contributions, geared towards adults, teenagers and children, are regularly uploaded to the database. The new platform invites users to find out whether a specific artwork is “currently on display” and whether the museum’s collection comprises similar works. The “albums” found on the online database’s start page allow visitors to discover individual works, to gain deeper insights or to leisurely browse the collection. The Leopold Museum’s ONLINE COLLECTION opens up new perspectives to experts as well as to an interested general public, and offers insightful contextualizations of the collection, from hidden treasures to new acquisitions.

The Leopold Museum’s Director Hans-Peter Wipplinger:

The ONLINE COLLECTION is an essential building block of the Leopold Museum’s strategy to make information available beyond physical boundaries. Along with collecting, researching and conserving, it is one of the core tasks of any museum to present and mediate art on site and, by extension, also within the digital sphere. We are committed to engaging new target audiences with art, and to offer free, unrestricted and user-friendly access to our collection to interested people all over the world in keeping with our educational mandate. This online presentation affords an opportunity to explore the collection – compiled by the passionate collector Rudolf Leopold (1925–2010) together with his wife Elisabeth Leopold from the 1950s onwards – in its entire range of different themes and epochs. We owe it to the generosity of the collectors Rudolf and Elisabeth Leopold that they brought their collection, comprising some 5,000 exhibits, into a non-profit private foundation in 1994 in conjunction with the Republic of Austria and the Austrian National Bank which, in turn, undertook to build a museum to house the collection and to help finance the running of the institution. This alliance between the civic commitment shown by the collectors and the visionary conduct of political decision makers acting as advocates on behalf of the public has secured this outstanding private collection for Austria, making it permanently accessible to the public first with the opening of the Leopold Museum in 2001, and now through the digital presentation of the collection.