Vereinigung bildender KünstlerInnen Wiener Secession

President Ramesch Daha and the board outline their goals:

With its ambitious programming, the Secession has built an outstanding reputation over the past decades; its exhibitions are widely noted not only in Vienna, but throughout Austria and on the international stage. As the board of the Secession, we continue this important work, establishing the institution as a scene of social engagement and emphasizing urgent concerns in culture, society, and politics.

The Secession draws its strength from the diversity of the positions represented on its board, whose members are actively involved in the contemporary art community in a wide variety of roles. Going forward, we believe it is key to sustain and bolster the representation of different experiences and biographical backgrounds.

Our plans for the next two years seamlessly build on the work of the previous term and are based on the same principles and objectives. Needless to say, we will continue to share the vision of a progressive exhibition institution led by artists with the public and be critical voices on the cultural, social, and political issues of our time.

Our 2024 exhibition program comprises four complete cycles as well as the project “Slime,” an experimental exhibition format that, after a multiday opening event in the main hall, will move to the digital realm. Since the beginning of 2023, all publications accompanying the Secession’s exhibitions are also available online on our website, making essential contents available to everyone free of charge.

The event series Tuesday@Secession, which debuted in 2022, will likewise come back in future summers. From July until September, events held in the Secession’s garden every Tuesday will give new as well as longstanding members of the Secession an opportunity to contribute their own programming ideas.

It remains our stated goal to establish and strengthen our institution as a site of social dialogue and build access for the broadest possible public audience. That is why we will emphasize our art education efforts, which specifically target new and hitherto underrepresented demographics. The existing audio guides to the Secession’s history and architecture are now also available in Serbian and Turkish and—the most recent addition—Polish; we look forward to welcoming growing numbers of visitors from this Viennese community. In April, we offered the first free guided tours in Austrian sign language. In the future, these free guided tours will be held twice a year and upon request from groups of sign-language speakers. We also plan to make the free admissions on the first Wednesday of every month, a special offer introduced as part of the celebrations of our anniversary, permanent.

The Secession Podcast series features conversations with artists, curators, and theorists who share fascinating behind-the-scenes information with listeners. The program also includes discussion events addressing issues of the day as well as experimental audio formats and exchanges of ideas between the members of the Association of Visual Artists, who draw on personal recollections to reflect on the 125-year history of this singular artist-led institution and build a narrative history collection.

Our undertaking of cataloguing, digitizing, and publishing the Secession’s archives is ongoing. We have invited the historian Prof. Oliver Rathkolb to launch a research project scrutinizing the Secession’s institutional history during and after the Nazi era; we expect to learn much we did not know about continuities as well as discontinuities in the intellectual and cultural history of the period. The first detailed findings will be presented on in January 2024.

Having devoted much energy during our first term on a successful drive to renew the Secession’s visual identity and the website, we now plan to emphasize sustainability and make a concerted effort to improve our ecological footprint. Fair pay and a welcoming working environment for the Secession’s staff remain a key concern for us.