Learning about the City

An exhibition in collaboration with the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and the Oberstufenrealgymnasium Landstraßer Hauptstraße

Using the city as play material, as a place to learn and teach in: that was the starting point of a project to connect future art educators from the Academy with grammar school pupils. The Wien Museum’s role is to provide knowledge and contacts. With no specific theme laid down in advance, three main points of focus emerged for each respective work group.

The first group is concerned with historical maps of the city from the Wien Museum, comparing them with Google Maps of today. What topographical changes have taken place? What is in fact documented in maps of today and of the past? To do this the area between their school and the museum has been investigated in great detail. The plan is to transform the two-dimensionality of the city map into an extensive 3-D installation in the exhibition.

For the second group, the focus was also on the route between the school and the museum. It designed an underground line (“U5”) between Landstraßer Hauptstraße and Wien Museum Karlsplatz. In this chapter of the exhibition, photographic montages of the possible underground stations, and an animated film that merges real findings from the city with fictive elements, are shown. An interactive game based on the photographic measurement of writing in public places gives visitors the chance to rewrite city stories.

The third group is concerned with museum objects which have fascinated many schoolchildren: the museum’s fashion collection, in which everyday life of the city is reflected particularly well. Crocodile handbags and fans made of eagle feathers provided the impulse for the creation of contemporary counter-designs.

Curators:
Elke Krasny
Lehrbeauftragte der Akademie der Bildenden Künste
Eva Lausegger
Bildnerische Erzieherin des Borg 3
Christine Strahner und Isabel Termini
Wien Museum

Project manager:
Elke Krasny