The Austrian Association of Women Artists (VBKÖ) was founded in 1910 and began renting its historical premises shortly thereafter in Vienna’s first district, where it can be found today. The association belonged to the early movements of women artists, being a pioneer historically: it lobbied for women artists, for the improvement of their artistic, economic and educational conditions, and to increase their representation, organizing international collaborations.

Organizations, such as the VBKÖ, demonstrate the complexities and contradictions of contemporary feminist history-writing: This is where the emancipatory history of an artistic women’s movement, dating back to the days of imperialism and which still has yet to be inscribed into official art history, meets the history of the collaboration with the Nazi regime. Through knowledge gaps – resulting from historical and internal fractures in the association’s own history – history-writing and research, in regard to National Socialism and the association’s class-specific and colonial entanglements, are more easily forgotten. One of the biggest challenges is, therefore, to continue building structures and initiating processes that enable the continual analysis of historical narratives anew, keeping processes of reflection active and making that knowledge public and discursive.