VBKÖ Archive: Guided Tour with Georgia Holz

We are excited to invite you to a guided tour of the VBKÖ Archive, led by VBKÖ member, art historian, and curator Georgia Holz.

Date: June 27, 6 pm
Language: In English

The VBKÖ Archive, built by the VBKÖ members themselves, has not only witnessed but evolved alongside history—from the final days of imperialism, the fall of the Habsburg Empire, and World War I, through Austro-Fascism and the Nazi era, to Austria’s progressive artistic movements, and into the present day as a queer-feminist organization.

The archive holds significant material artifacts, including historic documents and collections dating back to 1910, the year of the VBKÖ’s founding. It serves as a crucial starting point for critically examining the complexities of the association’s 115-year history and making these complexities accessible for both artistic and academic research. The VBKÖ and its archive remain in their original historic premises in Vienna’s 1st district, where the association began renting the space in 1911.
Since 2004, more than 30 artistic and scholarly projects have engaged with and at the VBKÖ archive, further activating its relevance in contemporary discourse. A central aim is to keep the archive alive within the organization by fostering a self-determined archival practice, by supporting active engagement with its own history, dedicating artistic-research formats, and cultivating queer-feminist and decolonial possibilities for action.

In recent years, the VBKÖ archive has received essential support from the Austrian Federal Government and the City of Vienna for renovation and digitization. Since the archive room will undergo renovation this year, this guided tour presents selected materials and research findings to offer insight into the archive’s ongoing development.

As part of the guided tour, you are also invited to explore the exhibition Narrating Archives, which presents projects by students at the seminar “Archive Erzählen/Narrating Archives” led by Georgia Holz from Expanded Museum Studies at the University of Applied Arts. The exhibition investigates four thematic strands drawn from the VBKÖ archive.

Georgia Holz is an art historian working as a freelance curator, writer and editor in Vienna. She is Senior Scientist at the Department of Art History at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, and previously taught at the Department of Site-Specific Art. She is part of the Archive Team of the VBKÖ and together with Stephanie Misa curated Archival Sites of Speculation: Storying the Silence in 2024.