The Tip of the Iceberg

Museum der Moderne Salzburg, Mönchsberg

Salzburg | Austria

30 Nov, 2019 - 13 Apr, 2020

On occasion of the fifteenth anniversary of the inauguration of the Museum der Moderne Salzburg鈥檚 M枚nchsberg venue, the grand exhibition The Tip of the Iceberg probes the depths of the museum鈥檚 collections, unearthing works that have not been on display in decades, if ever.

Salzburg, November 13, 2019. In the fifteen years since the gallery building atop M枚nchsberg hill opened its doors to the public in October 2004, the Museum der Moderne Salzburg鈥檚 holdings have grown considerably, thanks to additions to the museum鈥檚 own collection as well as the integration of permanent loans such as the Generali Foundation Collection. Reflecting the choices and emphases of the collection鈥檚 managers since the establishment of the museum, the diverse collections now comprise ca. 55,000 works of art from the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries.

In The Tip of the Iceberg, on view on two gallery floors, the Museum der Moderne Salzburg explores the history of its collections, including significant gaps, and answers questions around museum collection and exhibition practices. The show gathers the individual approaches of twelves curators, whose contributions complement each other in a polyphonic and ambitiously staged panorama of the collections and offer a unique glimpse behind the scenes of the museum鈥檚 operation. 鈥淚n light of constantly changing ideas about art and economic and political motivations, museums do well to periodically reconsider the premises of their four central responsibilities: the collection, preservation, and scholarly study of art as well as art education. That is why our exhibition examines questions such as: How do perspectives on a collection that has grown over the years shift with time? How does that affect the forms of its presentation? Which individual ideas and methods do curators bring to the work with the holdings? And what is the significance of the encounter between viewers and art in the museum? I invite our visitors to join us on this inspiring voyage of discovery into our collections and investigate what lends this museum its distinctive identity,鈥� Director Thorsten Sadowsky says.