Collecting for the Future: 250 Years of the ALBERTINA Museum

Albrecht Dürer, The Hare (detail), 1505, The Albertina Museum, Vienna.

The Albertina Museum includes over one million objects, numbering among the world’s most important collections of graphic art. Founded 250 years ago, this once private collection has long since become a world-class museum.

That it was Albert of Saxe-Teschen who laid its cornerstone in 1776 is well known. This exhibition, however, sheds light specifically on female contributions to this world-famous collection for the first time. The focus here is on Marie Christine, the favorite daughter of Empress Maria Theresia, and how she worked together with her husband Albert to build the collection in a systematic manner.

It is therefore the collection’s beginnings and the collectors’ respective motives that are explored, here. What profile was the collection intended to develop, and for what purpose was this collecting being done? Which artists were favored? And when did the largest groups of works by figures such as Albrecht Dürer or Egon Schiele arrive here?

These and further questions will be answered with reference to priceless examples such as Dürer’s Hare. In doing so, this presentation shall train its gaze not only on a great past but also forward, into the future.

Rosa Barba’s Artistic Perspective on the ALBERTINA

This forward-looking perspective is also reflected in the work of internationally acclaimed artist Rosa Barba. Created for the anniversary year, her site-specific installation explores the historical dimensions of the ALBERTINA as a nexus of past, present, and future. Following the exhibition, the work will enter the museum’s collection, thereby becoming part of the very history that the exhibition seeks to tell.

With Collecting for the Future, the ALBERTINA celebrates its anniversary year in 2026 and invites visitors to rediscover a collection that, for 250 years, has preserved art, documented the present, and shaped the future.