Highlights of Leopold Museum
Visit one of Vienna’s key cultural centres
Explore Leopold Museum’s remarkable collection and immerse yourself in the atmosphere of Vienna around the Fin de Siècle
Discover Leopold Museum's outstanding temporary exhibitions
Enjoy a marvellous view of Vienna from the MQ Libelle rooftop terrace
Significance: Leopold Museum houses the most extensive collection of modern Austrian art worldwide and takes you up close with greats like Klimt, Schiele, and Kokoschka.
Located in the MuseumsQuartier Vienna – one of the world's largest and most frequently visited art and cultural spots – the Leopold Museum is a key cultural centre of the city.
The design of the Leopold Museum, by architects Laurids Ortner and Manfred Ortner, is a bright cube clad in white shell limestone from the Danube river. With an exhibition space of some 58,1251 ft² (5,400 m²) over five floors, the spacious rooms awash with light offer an ideal setting for the presentation of the Leopold Museum's collection as well as temporary exhibitions.
The Leopold Museum, with more than 8,300 works, houses one of the world’s most important collections of Austrian art from the second half of the nineteenth century and Modernism. As a couple, Rudolf and Elisabeth Leopold created this unique collection over the course of five decades. Their extraordinary passion for art enabled them to collect artists like Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt – who, up to the 1960s, were considered taboo.
With more than 220 works, they established the world’s most comprehensive Egon Schiele collection. Other highlights among the collection include major works by Gustav Klimt, Richard Gerstl, Oskar Kokoschka, and Alfred Kubin, as well as works from artists of the nineteenth century such as Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller, August von Pettenkofen, Emil Jakob Schindler, and Anton Romako. In keeping with a holistic concept of art, Rudolf Leopold also gathered furniture and decorative works from the Jugendstil and Wiener Werkstätte movements by the likes of such artists as Josef Hoffmann and Koloman Moser, as well as objects from Africa, Oceania, and East Asia
With its permanent exhibition Vienna 1900. Birth of Modernism, the Leopold Museum has created a unique world of experience which affords complex insights into the fascination of Vienna around 1900 with Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt and allows visitors to immerse themselves in the atmosphere of this vibrant time. Experience the splendour and wealth of this era’s artistic and intellectual achievements firsthand through the masterpieces of the Leopold Museum.
The intersection of art with the intellectual world of “Vienna around 1900” is uniquely accessible at the Leopold Museum, where art historical developments from the Biedermeier period to Atmospheric Impressionism to Expressionism to New Objectivity can be followed in great depth. With its temporary exhibitions, the Leopold Museum goes beyond the Leopold collection and opens its spaces to other influential collectors and remarkable artists from the 19th century until today.
This year’s exhibitions:
RUDOLF WACKER
Magic and Abysses of Reality
30 October 2024 – 16 February 2025
POETRY OF THE ORNAMENT
The Backhausen Archives
13 November 2024 – 09 March 2025
Take the elevator up to the roof of Leopold Museum and enjoy a glass of wine together with marvellous views on a stylish rooftop terrace.
The MQ Libelle is named after its dragonfly shape and represents the creation of a new space for art and cultural projects over the roofs of Vienna. The deck was designed by the architects Laurids and Manfred Ortner, who had already realised the MuseumsQuartier site in its current form. Two of Austria's most influential artists developed the central elements of the terrace structure: Eva Schlegel designed MQ Libelle's glass wall, and Brigitte Kowanz created the iconic lighting fixtures on the deck.
Leopold Museum
Museumsplatz 1
1070 Vienna
Phone: +43 1 525700
