MAY 2020

Dear Friends of the Albertina Museum

the ALBERTINA Museum has some good news plus some updated information for you:

First, the good news: the ALBERTINA Museum and ALBERTINA MODERN will be reopening their doors to the public on Wednesday, 27 May 2020! We therefore warmly invite you to make your personal return to the visual world of the ALBERTINA Museum and ALBERTINA MODERN over Whitsun weekend or during the weeks thereafter. After all: online is nice, but offline is better! Viewing the originals beats even the most beautifully done digital museum tour—and this holds especially true for the works in the exhibition The Beginning at ALBERTINA MODERN, which will be open to the public for the first time on 27 May.

We know from lots of personal conversations and correspondence that many visitors, friends, and supporters have sorely missed the arts and culture during the weeks since 13 March, when our locations were forced to close. We’re therefore adding an additional 80 days (the duration of this closure) to your membership. This will be done automatically, with no action necessary on your part. So your current membership card will remain valid and be accepted when you enter the ALBERTINA Museum and ALBERTINA MODERN for a period of 80 days after the printed expiration date.

We’ve successfully asked all of our lenders to agree to an extension of those exhibitions at the ALBERTINA’s main location that had to be closed in March after they’d been open for just two weeks. It’s thanks to this that we’ll still be showing the retrospective presentation of works by German Realism’s premier painter Wilhelm Leibl as well as The Renaissance of Etching. From Dürer to Bruegel throughout this summer. What’s more, Van Gogh, Cézanne, Matisse, Hodler. The Hahnloser Collection is set to go on display from 27 August to 15 November 2020 as our autumn exhibition.

Please note that there will be new rules for visitors in keeping with current Covid-19 regulations; these will include a maximum number of simultaneous visitors (soon to be defined by Austria’s federal government). It’s therefore with a heavy heart that we’ve now canceled all of our openings, previews, and guided tours in expectation of massive limitations on permissible group sizes. Likewise affected are all events as well as the special programs for the Friends of the Albertina Museum that were planned to accompany the various exhibitions. When you visit, we request that you please comply with all federal government regulations—such as maintaining a minimum distance of 1.5 meters from others and wearing a facemask.

By way of consolation: for the Friends of the Albertina Museum, we’ll be making available free audio guides to which we’ve now added quotations by artists as well as new research findings. You can enjoy these redone audio guides on walks through our permanent collections Monet to Picasso. The Batliner Collection and the Habsburg State Rooms.

The 51st Ordinary General Meeting of the association Friends of the Albertina Museum, which was scheduled for 12 May 2020, unfortunately had to be postponed. You’ll be receiving timely notification of the replacement date.

We wish you and your loved ones continued strength and health in the days to come! 

Looking forward to seeing you again soon,
The ALBERTINA Team