Unearthing Empire: A Critical Tour through the collection of MAK - Museum für angewandte Kunst
MAK
MAK-Museum für angewandte Kunst
Stubenring 5, 1010 Wien
U3, 2, 74A
WienMobil Rad Stubentor U
Tour with Susanna Delali and Juli Krah in collaboration with WIENWOCHE.
This tour takes a closer look at the collections of MAK-Musuem für angewandte Kunst, with a particular focus on textiles — especially lace — and their design traditions, which have been shaped by global histories of empire and exploitation. It examines how materials and craftsmanship can — and should — be valued, and to what extent narratives of beauty and cultural prestige need to be critically re-examined without obscuring or omitting the labor, trade routes, and colonial entanglements behind them.
Using selected objects from the MAK’s permanent collections, the tour, organised in collaboration with WIENWOCHE, raises questions about how national cultural heritage is represented, whose stories are made visible, and how institutions like the MAK contribute to shaping aesthetic worldviews. In a dialogue grounded in personal experience, cultural reflection, and institutional critique, we explore what it means today to “decolonize” applied arts—and how we might begin to rethink our relationship to material culture in the future.
WIENWOCHE: BREATHE AGAIN
12–21 September 2025
www.wienwoche.org
Thank you Stadt Wien for the support.
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