MUSA - Museum on Demand (de) - a podcast by CastYourArt.com

MUSA - Museum on Demand

We keep things on hand because they are important to us. We store them. They are available: for example, birthdays of friends, important telephone numbers, and sometimes, works of art. In Vienna, the Museum on Demand (Museum auf Abruf, MUSA) serves this purpose. This museum of the city of Vienna keeps a collection of artworks by artists living in Vienna which is accessible to the city’s residents.

The collection began in 1945 with an acquisition of watercolors. Since then, the art collection has increased to nearly 20,000 works. They represent the work of Vienna’s resident artists for over a half century. Acquisition, says the present director of MUSA, Berthold Ecker, is the most significant form of support for artists. This has been the cornerstone of MUSA’s artistic policy since the beginning and remains so until today. The city of Vienna purchases about 130 new works of art annually for this collection. Today, one can find works from Franz West, Maria Lassnig, and Erwin Wurm there.

The city’s collection was available for quite some time, but there was no location available at which it could have been shown. What began with paintings, sculptures, and drawings, grew to include installations, videos, and new media work. If a permanent exhibition space could be found, the collection could be brought to the public’s attention. With each exhibition, a "Museum on Demand" was created, as designated in 1991 by the director of the collection at that time, Wolfgang Hilger, which is also how the name of the permanent institution was coined.

In 2007, the Museum on Demand came into being. In a building next to Vienna’s City Hall, 600 square meters of the most modern exhibition space including storage are located in the former premises of a public kitchen. The MUSA houses a front gallery reserved for young artists in addition to the exhibition hall in order to allow for these single exhibitions. In the Artothek, pieces from the collection can be borrowed and taken home for the small fee of less than three Euros per month.

The goal of bringing art made by the Viennese artists to the Viennese and making access easier is just as much a part of the museum’s program as the promotion of the artists. The museum offers three large-scale exhibitions per year and ten exhibitions in the front gallery, as well as an ambitious revolving program which takes into account individuals with special needs. Admission to the exhibitions is free. It would be inappropriate, according to the director of the museum, Berthold Ecker, if the Viennese and their guests, as patrons of the collection, had to pay admission.

An independent jury decides on the purchases as well as the selection of the young artists that are featured in the front gallery. Submissions for purchase are available here and those who are interested in an exhibition in the front gallery can submit an application accompanied with a biography and portfolio to MUSA. (wh/jn)

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