With the MAK’s renovation in 1986 and the associated development of new strategies for presenting the museum’s holdings, the MAK Permanent Collection—conceived to present the museum’s collection highlights in interplay with artistic interventions—was joined by the MAK Study Collection.
In the Study Collection, the MAK showed a small cross-section of its extensive holdings according to a material and technology-specific form of organization to which the respective collection curators’ specializations correspond. In this area of the museum, the items on exhibit were also embedded within their typological, historical and/or functional contexts.
With the directorship of Christoph Thun-Hohenstein, the Study Collection was developed further into a new kind of place for informal learning, with the numerous objects—placed on display either individually or in groups at regular periodic intervals within the context of new exhibiting formats—amounting to an overall presentation that is innovative in terms of both content and design. With the opening of the MAK DESIGN LAB on 12 May 2014, the museum has undertaken a radical new positioning of the former MAK Study Collection, and the design concept of the LAB has been consciously chosen as a contrast to the MAK Permanent Collection.
