MAK × Wienwoche: A critical tour through the MAK Collection

This tour takes a look at the MAK's collection, focusing on textiles, especially lace, and their design traditions. It examines how materials and craftsmanship can be evaluated. How must narratives of beauty and cultural prestige be re-examined without obscuring exploitation, trade routes and colonial entanglements?

Fri, 19.9.2025 4 pm — 5 pm

MAK – Museum of Applied Arts

Arye Wachsmuth, 2008, DER REFLEXIONSSPIEGEL III (What have you been doing all morning?), photographic material kindly provided by the Federal Monuments Office, Vienna

Broad Lace Braid Trimming, Venice, ca. 1700, T 10073 / 1935

MAK Permanent Collection Renaissance Baroque Rococo

Using selected objects from the MAK's permanent collections, the tour poses questions about how national cultural heritage is presented, whose stories are visible and how institutions such as the MAK help shape aesthetic worldviews. In a dialogue based on personal experience, cultural reflection and institutional critique, the tour explores what it means today to “decolonize” applied art - and how we can rethink our relationship to material culture in the future.

Free admission and participation
Meeting point: MAK Columned Main Hall
No registration required

wienwoche.org