4 May 2023

Fashion.at visited the opening of the exhibition 'Big City / Small Format' at the Wien Museum MUSA

Fashion.at visited the opening of the exhibition 'Big City / Small Format' at the Wien Museum MUSA at the Felderstasse 6-8 next to the Vienna City Hall. The opening speech had already started and the maximum number of guests had been reached. About fifty people were waiting in and outside the entrance. Every time one person left the museum's exhibition rooms, another was allowed to enter. Fashion.at was at the right time close to the barrier secured by a bouncer and got the chance to join a group of women who had just received the permission to enter the exhibition. In the course of the exhibition tour, the unintentional group relationship was to be formed again and again by chance, as at the large-format, extremely artificially colored postcard showing the Kahlenberg, the Höhenstraße, and the Danube in the 1960s. A fascinating new, unreal view of Vienna! The whole topography of the area was twisted. Not only the Danube was depicted in another position. The theme of image manipulation is also part of a digital wall installation that shows how postcards are transformed today to create a desired or beautified view.

The exhibition 'Großstadt im Kleinformat - Die Wiener Ansichtskarte' (Big City / Small Format - Vienna in Postcards) presents the history of postcards in Vienna, Austria, from the late 19th century to the present. It also includes the impact on society, such as the fashion for collecting illustrated postcards around 1900, which also had an impact on the emancipation of women, as the activities of collectors' clubs offered women a new freedom.

Visitors are guided through the chapters of the exhibition with texts in German and English. The first section covers the evolution of postcards from official postal cards to global image-based communication. The second section explores the manufacturing process and how it influenced the images chosen for postcards. The third section discusses how postcards reflect social attitudes and change over time. The fourth section discusses the importance of postcards as a form of communication and the emergence of postcard collecting. The final section highlights the continued relevance of postcards today.

There will be no catalog for the exhibition. Instead, starting with the opening of the exhibition, weekly articles will be published on magazin.wienmuseum.at, highlighting the postcard as a historical and contemporary phenomenon.

Image: Exhibition view 'Großstadt im Kleinformat – Die Wiener Ansichtskarte' ('Big City / Small Format - Vienna in Postcards'), Wien Museum MUSA, 4 May to 24 September 2023. Photo: Leonhard Hilzensauer, Wien Museum.
A separate album of the Wien Museum online collection displays the exhibited postcards from 'Big City / Small Format' at sammlung.wienmuseum.at.