This is your last chance to see Anni Albers’ textile tapestries, Richard Prince’s iconic work, and Christoph Schlingensief’s provocative performance art. In fact, August in Vienna is packed. Alongside these, you’ll find Canaletto and Bellotto’s Venetian vedute, KAWS’s signature characters, mumok’s new chapter under director Fatima Hellberg, and Thomas Demand at MAK. Here are ten exhibitions worth seeing this month.
1. Lower Belvedere: Anni Albers
Constructing Textiles is the first major Anni Albers retrospective in Austria. It traces her entire career, from material studies and woven paintings to spatial dividers, carpets, and theoretical texts. Albers was born in Berlin as Annelise Fleischmann. She joined the Bauhaus in 1922, initially enrolling in the weaving workshop out of necessity rather than passion. Still, she ended up staying there for eight years. When the Nazis shut down the Bauhaus, she emigrated to the United States with her husband, Josef Albers. There, the couple headed to the experimental Black Mountain College. She later crossed paths with figures like John Cage, Buckminster Fuller, and Ruth Asawa. Her legacy lives on in fashion today: Loewe’s Fall Winter 2025 collection draws directly on her textiles, with part of the proceeds supporting a women’s education center in Senegal. The exhibition runs from April 30 to August 16, 2026, at Unteres Belvedere.
In 1949, Albers became the first textile artist to receive a solo exhibition at MoMA in New York.
More on the exhibition at pinkpink.space
2. Architekturzentrum Wien: Global, Neutral
This exhibition maps the work of Austrian architects across Africa and Asia between 1955 and 1989, a period shaped by the Cold War and post-imperial political shifts. It runs from April 16 to October 5, 2026.
At the time, Austrian architects built in these “neutral” countries largely because Austria itself was formally neutral during the Cold War. Info and tickets
3. Galerie Krinzinger: Class of Daniel Richter: A Delicate Matter
This group exhibition brings together young artists including Rui Cao, Sinem Ergenekon, Tilda Göransson, Mimoza Liza, and Jérôme Meinlschmidt. It’s on view at Seilerstätte 16 in Vienna from July 9 to August 28, 2026. Fun fact: art historian Ursula Krinzinger founded the gallery back in 1971, and since then, it has hosted more than 500 exhibitions.
4. Belvedere 21: Stellprobe
This exhibition presents the past decade’s collection acquisitions, installed by Heimo Zobernig, with works by Gelatin, Flora Hauser, Jakob Lena Knebl, Ulrike Müller, Michèle Pagel, Isy Schmidlehner, Anne Speier, and Franz West, alongside Zobernig’s own pieces. It runs from July 10 to October 4, 2026. Notably, “Stellprobe” is a term borrowed from theater, referring to a rehearsal focused purely on the actors’ positions on stage. Similarly, Zobernig approaches the placement of the artworks themselves as a kind of staged arrangement.
5. Albertina: Richard Prince
This major retrospective is dedicated to Richard Prince, who has reshaped the visual codes of American consumer culture since the 1970s. The exhibition, featuring around 150 works, includes his iconic Cowboys, Fashion, and Gangs series. However, it’s only on view until August 16, 2026, so don’t wait too long. Fun fact: Prince became famous largely for rephotographing Marlboro cigarette ads, stripping away the text, and turning them into original artworks of his own. Richard Prince at albertina.at
6. MAK: Christoph Schlingensief: Es ist nicht mehr mein Problem!
This is the first major solo exhibition in Austria dedicated to German performance artist and director Christoph Schlingensief, created in collaboration with Wiener Festwochen and Berlin’s Gropius Bau. It opened on May 13 and runs through September 13, 2026. Fun fact: in 2000, Schlingensief sparked a major scandal with his action “Bitte liebt Österreich,” staged right in front of the Vienna State Opera, where he had passersby vote on which container residents deserved to be deported as the “most undesirable.” Schlingensief at mak.at
7. MAK: Thomas Demand: Räume, die von gestern träumen
German photographer and sculptor Thomas Demand has transformed the MAK Contemporary space into an installation inspired by historical theater and opera sets. It runs from May 27, 2026, to January 24, 2027. Fun fact: Demand never photographs reality directly. Instead, he builds a precise paper and cardboard replica of a scene, photographs it, and then destroys it entirely. Thomas Demand at mak.at
8. mumok: Terminal Piece
This is the first major exhibition under new director Fatima Hellberg, built around Kate Millett’s Terminal Piece (1972), the first acquisition added to the mumok collection during her tenure. Structured in five “acts,” the exhibition explores the act of looking, and specifically, who is watching whom. It runs from June 20, 2026, to February 7, 2027. Fun fact: today, Kate Millett is better known as the feminist author of the bestseller Sexual Politics (1970) than as a visual artist. Terminal Piece at mumok.at
9. Vienna Furniture Museum (Möbelmuseum): Made in Austria
This exhibition showcases the most significant works of Austrian furniture design from the postwar period, a time that accompanied the country’s cultural recovery and economic boom. It runs from April 15 to December 8, 2026. Fun fact: many of the pieces on display were created directly under the Marshall Plan, as part of the broader effort to rebuild postwar industry.
10. Kunsthistorisches Museum: Canaletto & Bellotto
For the first time in the German-speaking world, the works of Canaletto and his nephew Bernardo Bellotto are displayed side by side. Together, their 18th-century vedute of Venice, London, and Vienna are joined by loans from the British Museum, the Wallace Collection, and the Liechtenstein Collections. The exhibition runs from March 24 to September 6, 2026. Fun fact: Bellotto deliberately adopted his famous uncle’s nickname, “Canaletto,” since at the time, it served as a guarantee of quality and a higher price tag.Canaletto & Bellotto at khm.at.
Bonus: Albertina Modern: KAWS: Art & Comix
If you’re a fan of pop culture, this exhibition runs through September 27, 2026, placing KAWS in dialogue with Lichtenstein, Haring, Basquiat, and others, so it remains open throughout August as well. Fun fact: KAWS got his start in the 1990s as a “vandal” reworking advertising billboards across New York, and his signature crossed-out eyes on faces have stuck with him ever since.
