MAK is an excellent Museum of Applied Arts. They do an excellent job getting guest curators and…read moreartists to engage with the collection in inventive and dynamic ways to highlight various items & how they relate to each other. This makes the collection come alive, and it becomes much more interesting to experience, compared to the standard, more static, approach I see in many museums. One highlight was the stunning 1907 gesso panels, Seven Princesses by Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh. You need to see it in person to appreciate its subtle beauty and impressive scope. Apparently, the Seven Princesses only survived WW1 because a curator hid the piece to keep it safe. The curator brought it down to the museum's basement, put the panels into three crates along the wall, then built a brick wall in front of them, which was painted to match the existing walls. They stayed hidden like this until they were discovered in 1990. Another highlight was an installation from Superflux called Invocation for Hope, which featured hundreds of dead trees burned from a forest fire that were installed around some live plants & moss around a 'pool'. When I visited, they also had a lot of environment & sustainability related projects on display -- there were some really interesting projects there. The building itself also has lovely architectural features.

I happened to go to MAK on free night which is Tuesday from 6 PM to 10 PM so I had a really good…read moretime. Does it compare to the Victoria & Albert in London, NO.... but then again what does. Also this museum building has a lot of space, a lot of space that they don't really utilize very well. There could be a whole lot more on display. But anyway my favorite part was the permanent collection which is on the top floor, lots of decorative items from around 1890 into 1940's.

The Wien Museum located in Karlsplatz near Karlskirche (St. Charles' Church) is a free museum in…read moreVienna where it goes through the history of the city (until present day!). The permanent exhibition spans 3 floors where they describe and highlight the city's history in chronological order quite thoroughly. The exhibits can be interactive as well and there are many items on display (artifacts, paintings, etc.). The museum also has temporary paid exhibits for a small fee which rotate. The Wien Museum has a restaurant on the ground floor as well as a cafe on the 4th floor overlooking St. Charles Church with ample seating and nice views of the city for you to relax after your museum visit. The museum is modern where the washrooms are clean. We easily spent a few hours here going through the vast exhibit of Vienna's history. Extremely informative and well put together! A definite must visit if you do visit this city!

I visited the Wien Museum at Karlsplatz a week or so ago when I was visiting Vienna with a friend…read more It's a huge museum, but the reason we were there is for the exhibit, "Vienna. My History." It's the museum's permanent exhibit, and it's free to visit. (When you walk into the the museum, just walk straight, and you end up entering the exhibit. You don't have to pay for admission if you're just visiting for that exhibit. And - wow. What an exhibit. I'm so glad we visited on what was my first visit to Vienna, because the exhibit is incredibly comprehensive. It includes over 1,700 objects, from prehistoric to contemporary times. It spans three levels of the museum and 35,000 square feet. I learned so much about Viennese and Austrian history from the exhibit - it's a great exhibit to visit early on in a visit to Vienna, because it will give context to so much of what you'll see as you walk and explore the city. I highly recommend visiting for this incredible exhibit - what a wonderful thing to make free for visitors!