The ‘Jazz Heart’ Transplant
On Ash Wednesday just past, the U.S. Embassy, the Austrian Foreign Ministry and Diplomatische Akademie Wien joined forces to celebrate the 175th anniversary of U.S.-Austrian diplomatic relations with a Gala Event which, not incidentally, featured music performed by the Jon Sass Group, a multi-national quartet led by American jazz tuba(!) exponent Jon Sass. Perhaps inspired [...]
Craftsmanship and Culture: Loos, Wittgenstein and Schönberg
The Looshaus in Vienna’s 1st District is the setting for a monthly series of talks and music entitled Dem Ton ein Wort, (A Word on Sound) addressing the word and ideas of the leading “craftsmen of modernism” Alfred Loos, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Arnold Schönberg, and including chamber music performed by some of Vienna’s musicians adds [...]
A Dark Past at the Academy of Sciences
As the 75th anniversary of the Anschluss, the annexation of Austria by Germany on 12 March 1938, looms, the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW) will open its first-ever exhibition honouring those members of the Academy forced to flee Austria after the Nazis seized power. Titled The Academy of Sciences in Vienna, 1938-1945 and organised by [...]
Tropical Fish, Beer, Pornography and Havel
Czech president Vaclav Klaus will soon leave office, and as only the second leader of post-revolution Czech Republic, he spends much time attacking and devaluing his predecessor’s legacy. One day he refers to “nothing but holes in the walls” he allegedly found in Prague Castle when he took over from Vaclav Havel, suggesting the former [...]
Fear-Based Identity Crisis
They don’t shave their heads, tote swastikas or glorify the Nazis and the majority are educated. The “Identitären” represent a new right wing phenomenon in Europe. Initiated in France in 2003, it is a young movement that has spread eastwards but also west to the United Kingdom. On 25 February at Café Tirolerhof, the chairman [...]
Gilded Through History
It’s dark. We see a man entering a gallery whose dozens of display cases are all empty, save one. He approaches it, eyes wide with wonder at the golden object topped with two reclining figures in front of him: The Benvenuto Cellini Salt Cellar. While he gazes at it, he begins talking to the piece, [...]
Private Property: Is Water the Price of Union?
Austrians love their water. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 94% of Austrians say they are satisfied with water quality. When restaurant owners attempted to charge for tap water in 2009, it was cultural blasphemy in a city where water, fed by Alpine springs, is seen as a birthright. When Austria held [...]
Renate Brauner: Keynesian in the Rathaus
In late February, the West and South sides of the Rathaus were still wrapped in gauze to contain the dust from sandblasting the final layers of soot built up over the decades and the repairing of weather damage to the 1883 city hall’s magnificent Gothic stonework. This is phase one of a major, 11 stage [...]
Naked at the Naked Men
The Nackte Männer exhibit at the Leopold Museum has been a hot topic in Vienna since it opened in October – provoking a lot of good banter and not a few jokes on the subject of male nakedness in art. So why are female nudes everywhere in art, when the slightest glimpse of a male [...]
