QUEER MUSEUM VIENNA
QUEER1 MUSEUM VIENNA is a self-organised, non-profit collective that treats art as a practice of resistance and re-imagination. We fight against patriarchal structures and engage in activism for LGBTQIA+2 rights through queering participatory and inclusive practices.
Our aim is to establish a relational space for Queer culture and art. In doing so, we want to make a strong statement for diversity and self-determination, and negotiate our identity outside of the heteronormative matrix. We want to create a radically collective museum with queer structures that mirror our anti-capitalist values. We strive for equity and queer liberation, opposing assimilationist discourses which suggest that apart from sexual orientations and gender identities, we are the same as mainstream society. We are individuals with our own value, and the key task is to work towards the main question: how we can live together.
Our method of Queering the Museum does not assume that we already know what a fully Queered museum is, and what would the path to get there look like. Rather, we want to encourage discussion and learning through trial and error processes, gathering experience, making contacts, and subsequently incorporating feedback. The boundaries between audience and collective are permeable, as visitors are welcome to actively contribute to the collective. We are therefore constructing a flexible foundation for a fluid institution.
QUEER MUSEUM VIENNA is never fixed: it constantly transforms and reinvents itself. Among other projects, we have curated and organised events and exhibitions at Belvedere21, Depot, at art universities, art fairs and protests. Our envisioned space is open to the public, inclusive and accessible, irrespective of financial means, physical and mental abilities. We reach different audiences and spaces. Our audience is diverse: those already engaged with queer issues, potential allies, and people simply curious about our collective.
We aim to represent the Queer communities and do them justice. A necessary step towards writing her-, their- and histories is to gather marginalised narratives and underrepresented artistic positions under one roof and make them visible. We don’t generalise; instead we take a careful, step-by-step approach to our work. By means of documentation and archiving, we make it possible to read individual events or works not as singular statements but to link those many fragments together and create an alternative image.
QUEER MUSEUM VIENNA, founded at the beginning of 2020, operates with limited financial means and is driven mainly by voluntary engagement. Yet it is already holding its name as an established institution: the founding of a Museum as an appropriation of power asserts that Queer art and culture not only need this space, but are taking it now. Functioning as a showcase, the Museum pushes open a window to a queer future — a futurity, to something that it could become.
Queers, take and make your spaces!
AWARDS
Community Strategy Award
April 2022 – awarded to the Queer Museum Vienna by Community Building Austria
Preis der freien Szene Wiens
October 2022 – awarded by IG Kultur Vienna
Offspace Prize
September 2025 – the Offspace Prize for independent project- and artist-run-spaces was awarded to the museum by Vienna’s cultural department (MA7)
CONTACT:
HELP US STAY FABULOUSLY ALIVE!
1) Bank
QUEER MUSEUM VIENNA
IBAN: AT04 2011 1842 6678 7200
2) PayPal
3) Gofundme
1) We, the collective behind the Museum, understand Queer as:
— an umbrella term for the above mentioned acronym of sexual orientations and gender identities that do not conform to traditional cis-heteronormative hegemony;
— a political mindset informed by a theoretical and activist approach that breaks down stereotypical thinking to challenge different forms of oppression, particularly when based on gender and sexuality.
2) Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Queer & Questioning, Inter, Asexual & Aromantic+