THE BEAUTY OF DIVERSITY. An exhibition showcasing the diversity of current artistic positions in the collections of the Albertina

For the past 250 years, the Albertina has mainly collected art by white men from a Western perspective." According to Director Klaus Albrecht Schröder, it is now time to showcase diversity from other continents, as well as artists who have long been ignored because of their gender, mental health or sexual preference.
With over 110 works, selected from around 65,000 works from the period after 1945, Albertina Modern Director Angela Stief is now showing an aesthetic of diversity in the spring exhibition "Beauty of Diversity", which has been compiled almost exclusively from the Albertina's own holdings. Over the past 20 years, the museum's collection has been constantly expanded to include more diverse positions.
The "Beauty of Diversity" is organised thematically into 13 chapters: there is a room dedicated to feminist art, one for Art Brut, one for Black Art and others, with each room representing an independent show.
The focus is on the diversity of beauty found in indigenous art, in the grotesque, the hybrid, in the art of psychiatric patients and in the subversion of beauty ideals.
In addition to lesser-known positions, shooting stars of the African art scene such as Alexandre Diop and Amoako Boafo are also represented, as are other well-known artists such as Cindy Sherman, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Jonathan Meese, Franz Ringel and the Gugging artist August Walla.
The self-taught artist Aïcha Khorchid, born in Pakistan in 1981, only began painting a few years ago and processes her traumatic life story in her moving paintings.
The Gelitin/Gelatin collective deforms the Mona Lisa into a framed 3D plastic mould, Maria Lassnig stomps through New York as a gigantic "Queen Kong" and Verena Bretschneider shows her grotesque fabric sculptures.
"Beauty of Diversity" puts the spotlight on artists who are often only marginalised in society, but also in the art world. In this way, art attempts to open up society by a few small steps. At the same time, the show demonstrates that the same old, Western-dominated aesthetic canon is gradually becoming rigid and no longer represents large parts of global art production. (written by Cem Angeli)

The exhibition at the Albertina Modern is open daily from 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM until August 18, 2024.

https://www.albertina.at

Interviewee: Angela Stief

Copyright info: The audio and video recording has been made with personal permission of the artist.
Licensing: 0
Language(s): German
Subtitles: English
Producer: KA21 GmbH / CastYourArt
Production crew: Wolfgang Haas, Helmut Feier, Michael Rottmann
Production country: Austria, Vienna