Body Space. The collections

Body Space. The collections
October 10, 2024 – February 2, 2025
Mönchsberg, level 3

The year 2024 brings major anniversaries for the Museum der Moderne Salzburg. Twenty years ago, the extraordinary site on the Mönchsberg was opened and became a new landmark for the State and City of Salzburg. Ten years ago, one of Austria’s most significant private art collections with an international focus, the Generali Foundation Collection, came to Salzburg on permanent loan and has since then remained a productive stakeholder at the Museum.

To mark these anniversaries, the Museum team is presenting a series of exhibitions that will bring together the outstanding art collections that are preserved here and are the subject of research: the Museum’s own holdings, the Generali Foundation Collection, the Federal Photography Collection, and the Salzburg State Collection. The spectrum ranges from works of Classical Modernism to new media, from work with historical references to work that thematizes the pressing issues of our day. What connects these collections? What social and cultural perspectives does this artistic spectrum open up?

This series of exhibitions cuts across different periods and different media to address these questions, and is founded on two basic motifs: on space as a social structure, and play as a metaphor for social interaction. While the social space is understood as the coexistence and togetherness of human beings – also in relation to Nature – the purpose-free, enjoyable nature of play is seen here as a means of learning the rules and systems of our reality while also thwarting and altering them. By bringing the works in the collections together from this perspective, the Museum enables a comprehensive view of homo ludens and homo socialis, of human beings who experience and shape the world as playful, social beings.