Austrian Museum of Folk Life and Folk Art

About

The Austrian Museum of Folk Life and Folk Art (German: Österreichisches Museum für Volkskunde), commonly known as the Volkskundemuseum Wien, is an ethnographic museum in Vienna, Austria. It is one of the largest museums of its kind in Europe and holds extensive collections of folk art as well as material relating to historical and contemporary everyday cultures in Europe. The museum is based at Laudongasse 15–19 in the 8th district of Vienna, in the Gartenpalais Schönborn. During the renovation process, for which planning began in 2021 and implementation started in early 2025, the museum relocated its activities to Pavilion 1 of the Otto Wagner Areal in Vienna's 14th district.

The museum was founded in 1895 by Michael Haberlandt and Wilhelm Hein as an association-run scholarly museum devoted to documenting the cultures of the Habsburg monarchy. Haberlandt and Hein both worked in the Prehistoric-Ethnographic Department of the Imperial and Royal Natural History Court Museum, now the Natural History Museum, Vienna, and were leading members of the Anthropological Society in Vienna.

The museum is operated by the Verein für Volkskunde, which has carried the museum since its foundation in 1895. Its collections were initially stored in apartments and warehouses before the museum found its first home in rooms of the Vienna Stock Exchange. In 1917 it moved to the baroque Gartenpalais Schönborn, where it opened in 1920.

The collections were originally conceived for the entire territory of Cisleithania, the Austrian half of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and were intended to represent the peoples of the monarchy. The museum's early collecting policy was shaped by the idea of documenting the multi-ethnic Habsburg state and by the development of comparative folklore studies.

The Gartenpalais Schönborn was built between 1706 and 1715 for Friedrich Karl von Schönborn-Buchheim after designs by Johann Lukas von Hildebrandt.

The museum's collections focus on Austrian and European everyday culture, folk art and material culture. They include around 150,000 three-dimensional objects and approximately 260,000 photographs, which are being progressively digitised. The museum also maintains archives and an online collection platform.

In 2022 and 2023, the museum hosted the project Queer Museum Vienna @ VKM, a cooperation that presented exhibitions, talks, performances and other public programmes on queer art, culture, history and activism. The project was conceived as a temporary platform and as a preview of a possible future house for queer cultural history and art in Vienna.

The museum library is a specialist reference library for folklore, European ethnology and related fields. It contains about 100,000 volumes.

In 2024 and 2025, the museum began the relocation and implementation phase of a general renovation of its historic building in the Gartenpalais Schönborn. According to the museum, the renovation is expected to be largely completed in autumn 2026. A sneak preview is planned for May 2027, followed by full museum operations with a revised concept from September 2027. During this period, the museum's public activities are taking place at the Otto Wagner Areal.