The Austrian Cultural Forum in New York celebrates its tenth anniversary
NEW YORK – “The Austrian Cultural Forum in New York is a showcase for a modern and innovative image of Austria in the USA. Over the past ten years, not only the dramatic building caused a stir: the Cultural Forum has organised, hosted and presented some 2000 events staging contemporary Austrian artists and scientists during this time”, Austrian Vice Chancellor and Foreign Minister Michael Spindelegger said on the occasion of the anniversary.
The new building designed by architect Raimund Abraham was opened in 2002. The daring exterior of this masterpiece of architecture illustrates what is presented within: modern Austrian art with an edge to it, art that is worth seeing, feeling and listening to and that keeps moving forward in the coexistence and discourse with its American environment.
Some of the highlights of the past ten years were the exhibitions “The Seen and the Hidden: [Dis]covering the Veil” about the veils worn by Muslim women, and “Under Pain of Death” about capital punishment. Young performers and composers of modern music, such as Georg Friedrich Haas and Olga Neuwirth, were introduced to a US audience. The Cultural Forum organises the annual “Moving Sounds” festival of electronic music that has become an established part of the New York festival scene. Some of the guests at the Cultural Forums include Austrian stand-up comedians, musicians and writers such as maschek, Willi Resetarits, Daniel Kehlmann, Wolf Haas and many more.
On the occasion of its tenth anniversary, the Cultural Forum hosts a jubilee exhibition that challenges its role and importance from the point of view of art. To illustrate the great importance of transcultural cooperation, the exhibition bears the bilingual title “Our Haus”. The exhibition will be opened by the Austrian Minister of Education, Arts and Culture, Claudia Schmied, on May 16th.
Our Haus presents works and commissioned pieces of artists whose art has made a lasting impression in the United States over the past ten years, artists who have established creative networks. And yet, the exhibition curated by Amanda McDonald Crowley from Austria, is not a best-of show, but a subjective and individual presentation of transversal, creative migration between Austria and the USA.
The definition of “house” is of central importance for the curator. “A house is a building where people live or work. The kitchen is often the centre of a home. I think that you can best talk over food.“ The exhibition includes work by Sabine Bitter and Helmut Weber, Judith Fegerl, Rainer Ganahl, Matthias Herrmann, Helmut and Johanna Kandl, Mathias Kessler, Fabian Patzak, Rainer Prohaska, the WochenKlausur artists collective and TIME’S UP.
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