Art museums. I think you either love them or hate them.
While entry for kids was free, John and I decided to give ourselves a pass on potential dragging of feet and gnashing of teeth. (Without a Mona Lisa to lure them in, I knew an art gallery was going to be a hard sell. Plus, we already went to one in Munich.)
People have given me great suggestions about doing scavenger hunts with kids at art galleries. But know what’s even easier? Leaving them back at the apartment!
Plus, we were overdue for a date.
Usually this museum is closed on Mondays but since it was a holiday (Easter Monday) it was open. This feels a bit counterintuitive, but I’m not complaining.
While Impressionism is our favourite style (and there is none of it here; I think you have to visit the Albertina for that and maybe there is some at Belvedere Palace as well?), it was a lovely space. The building itself is stunning, and I think this was the best Egyptian collection I’ve ever seen.
But I’m getting ahead of myself!
We started out by having an absolutely delicious brunch at SiL. We lucked into a table. Most places were closed for the holiday so this cafe was packed but we managed to get a table with an hour to spare before it was reserved (other people got turned away).
Everything was delicious. And it’s so much more relaxing to be sipping a coffee in a lovely cafe without children in tow. In other words, I had zero regrets about leaving them behind!
It was a chilly and overcast day, which are perfect conditions to walk around inside.
The interior architecture of the building is stunning.
Pictures absolutely do not do the Egyptian wing justice. Giant sarcophagi, mummies, so many things that are thousands of years old!!! It’s completely mind-blowing to me. The craftsmanship is incredible and the fact it was done so long ago with limited tools. There was no art supply store down the street and there certainly weren’t any YouTube tutorials.
Things were organized by era, so we eventually made it to the Greek and Roman stage of history! Suddenly there were lots of marble busts and naked humans.
There was a whole section dedicated to jewelry. It’s truly incredible to me that such intricate things were created so long ago and with so much precision. I literally thought multiple times They sure don’t make things like they used to. I can’t count how many times I’ve heard my father say that phrase and apparently now I’m old/nostalgic enough to say it, too.
And then we hit paintings.
I found this series fascinating. They seem original and modern, but they’re from the 16th century (by Giuseppe Arcimboldo; I’d never heard of him before).
The first one is Summer. The face is made up of plants and fruit! And he “wove” his signature and date into the straw. That was such a cool detail, but it’s not as obvious in the picture as it was in person.
Water is made up of sea creatures (my favourite is the stingray!), and Fire was… dramatic.
There’s a portrait of Marie Antoinette, originally commissioned by her mother. It used to hang in Hofburg Palace. I guess in the absence of photobooks, giant paintings had to suffice!
It’s not as impressive as Bellini’s famous work in the Louvre, but they had a series of three different paintings depicting the beheading of John the Baptist, and this was our favourite (of an admittedly macabre subject).
Madonna in the Meadow by Raphael. Her features are so delicate.
Not sure of the name of this painting or the artist, but I loved the blue dress. This painting was at the end of a hallway and the dress grabbed my attention enough that I told John I wanted to circle back around to take a picture.
I’d never heard of Pieter Bruegel the Elder (turns out, KHM has the largest collection of his work in the world). He’s known for incredible attention to detail and The Tower of Babel (his most famous painting) was wonderful.
Here’s another case of pictures not doing any justice to the “real” thing. The Suicide of Saul had such tiny details I came back to stare at it multiple times. It’s behind plexiglass, which I really appreciated because it meant I could get really close.
There are something like 230 characters in this painting playing 83 distinct games! I didn’t try to corroborate either statistic.
The scale of some of the works on display is hard to convey. This was a Peter Paul Rubens, I think? He had some HUGE paintings.
I loved the snow effect in this picture.
It was fun to see a Vermeer (The Art of Painting). I’d love to see Girl with a Pearl Earring some day.
There’s also a whole section of clocks and automata, which kinda felt like a completely different museum.
There’s a beautiful rotunda that looks down into a cafe space. We didn’t go, but it was bustling!
Shoe shot!
In terms of the building, it was commissioned by Emperor Franz Joseph I and was mostly designed to be a central warehouse for the huge Habsburg art collection. When the monarchy ended in the early 1900s, it became a public gallery.
A lot of the artwork was removed and hidden during WWII, and the museum wasn’t able to reopen for a while after the war was over.
If you like art, I’d definitely recommend adding this to your list of things to do in Vienna. I also felt like the level of description (in German and English) accompanying each painting was probably the best of any gallery I’ve ever been to. My family all groans when I see a sign because I love to read signage and the ones in this museum were top-notch!
- Given the choice, would you take kids to this museum… or choose peace and quiet?
- What specific painting or work of art is your favourite?
- Do you like reading signs and plaques as much as I do?
Discover more from The Optimistic Musings of a Pessimist
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
This looks wonderful. I feel like I’ve seen reprints of Giuseppe Arcimboldo’s work somewhere, it does seem familiar. I think you made a good call leaving the kids at home. As you know, I love to go to galleries by myself and I’ve come to prefer audioguides to reading the information. I like to move around and look at the painting while learning about it.
We didn’t get an audioguide this time and the display information was amazing, but I’ve never really thought about how handy it would be to have the ability to move around to look at the painting from different angles and distances WHILE learning about it!
I love this museum – my parents took us every time we were in Vienna to say hello to the Breugel paintings (the elder is from the Brussels area, which is where I grew up). It’s making it’s way higher and higher up my list of things to do next summer!
We’ve been taking the kids to museums for a while now so they’re getting better trained 😂 I’ll keep at it! I want to take them to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam again this year (haven’t taken the youngest yet) and maybe we’ll do a quick detour to Van Gogh. I love reading all the signs as well – I tend to feel a bit bereft if there’s nothing. I mean, I want background! And explanations!
The Breugel paintings were the hit of the museum for me. (That and the building).
Yes to loving signs. It really irks me when there’s nothing and this one was probably the best of any art museum I’ve ever visited. I really appreciated the background and interesting tidbits.
Oh, I do like paintings with lots of details, I could spend hours in front of them! I think I would have liked Bruegel as well. There’s something so fascinating about works where you keep discovering new little scenes the longer you look.
And I’m fully with you on signage. If I’m not allowed to read every plaque, I don’t really want to be there 😄
My family laughs when they see my spotting a sign. I make a beeline for it.
This gallery was probably the best I’ve ever been to in terms of explanations. They were detailed and interesting!
GREAT call to leave the kids at home!!! I’m still scarred from a trip to the Salvador Dali museum many years ago. Let’s just say that I won’t ever, for the rest of my life, go to a museum with ONE of my kids. And it’s not Paul.
Anyway… I love this museum. I was there, but I barely remember it. I would love to see it again. And you made me think about how hard it must have been to create art back in those days. How hard it must have been to get the supplies, and yet people created incredible masterpieces. I’m also thinking of them hiding the paintings during WWII to keep them safe. It’s amazing these things survived!
Ha! Why am I not surprised it’s Angie?? Also, I am scarred from a few things from our NYC trip. A bad experience can REALLY leave a mark, Jenny. I feel you.
It was a phenomenal art gallery. Top notch. No statement pieces (like a Mona Lisa), but consistently beautiful and the signs, as I’ve said many times in the comment section, were SO GOOD!
What a glorious museum! I love the picture with the blue dress – so I had to look it up! (Madonna and Child with St Catherine of Alexandria and St James the Greater by Lotto)
I would take kids to the museum – you never know what might strike their fancy – but have another adult along to tag-team as needed. I would read all the signs and information panels and forget to watch the kids!
I love the Impressionists (and Van Gogh- Starry Night forever!!) , but a more recent favorite piece is “It’s a Delicate Balance” by Christi Belcourt. Just amazing – she paints it as if she’s doing beading on hide. Very different and beautiful.
Thank you! Ha. I love that I now have record of the painting.
I looked up It’s a Delicate Balance – it’s STUNNING!
And we love, love, love, love Van Gogh’s. We really can’t wait to make it to the Netherlands one day to visit the dedicated museum.
Good call to leave the offspring behind for this one. Nothing to climb, jump off, or pose with. . . yawn, who wants to go to a stupid old museum?
I think anytime a woman is shown in a blue dress with a child, it is supposed to be Mary. (Probably the only fact I remember from Art History classes.)
Vermeer is my favorite: I have 2 of his paintings in my dining room—not originals, copies by me, of course.
The architecture sort of overwhelms and detracts from the art, in my opinion. I’d be content to just wander the halls and rooms with nothing on their walls. The floors alone make me gasp that shoes are allowed.
There weren’t any of the tools that we use today to create realistic art, so the artists of long ago were truly gifted. (I probably would have been a lacemaker, due to my severe nearsightedness.)
Art like this makes me feel like a phony baloney plastic banana.
Ha! Yes, Indy really does like to have open spaces and the chance to move around. A lot.
What? You don’t have original Vermeer’s, Jana?? Haha.
Your art is incredible and a God-given talent!!! Definitely museum worthy <3
I love museums. Like you, I prefer Impressionism, but I would have a wonderful day at that beautiful museum. The guy with the crazy paintings from the 16th century, WOW. It does look modern, especially FIRE. It has a steam punk vibe to me.
I’m not big on the Dutch masters, but Vermeer is so amazing. Actually, I like Rembrandt too. I guess I like them, just not as much as Impressionism. I saw Girl With a Pearl Earring! They were doing work on the museum where it lives, so they sent it on tour, and it came to San Francisco. AMAZING. Will you be near Holland on this trip? Maybe you could go?
What a perfect day.
Steam punk is the genre I was looking for! I think I was far more impressed by it because of how old it was; surely people must have been weirded out by something so unusual???
We won’t be in Holland this time, but I am desperate to get there at some point (mostly for the art).
This looks beautiful and interesting. I love the jewelry, and the Egyptian artifacts are, as you say, amazing. Just thinking of how they created so many items with limited resources is astounding.
I have limited attention when it comes to reading all the descriptions. I think I start strong, then lose interest in the details and just take in everything with my eyes. When my kids were the ages of Indy and Belle, we would probably still go with them, but one of my girls (Lolo) has so much patience and interest in all the details, while the other (Linds and her father) would just like to breeze through, getting the Reader’s Digest Version of everything.
How lovely that you were able to get in for a fancy coffee and food before the museum; serendipity!
I definitely could have stayed longer. All those signs to read! I was in heaven!
My kids are not into art details; now Belle spent ages at the crime museum and the details were interesting to her. I will be so curious to see if they end up liking art as they get older??
Oh my gosh this looks like my kind of heaven! I love love love walking around museums, and art galleries. I’m also another person who loves to read all the plaques and information everywhere!
However I’ve learned I absolutely cannot take my husband and son with me. They zoom around and then wait impatiently. And honestly, I felt like throwing my husband out when we went to an art gallery, he walked in, and said “I could have done that.” Grrrrr!!
These paintings are so incredible, and to have seen them in real life…I’m so beyond jealous. I hope you had a wonderful time!
Reading signs brings me so much joy. It baffles me that my family usually wants to zoom right on by!
I could have done that. Hahaha! I’m sure the artist would have loved to hear it.
It was a great art gallery, especially sans kids.