Image: Lena Henke, ‘UR Mother’, 2019, Heidi Horten Collection, Vienna, © the artist
The Heidi Horten Collection in Vienna is showing ‘ANIMALIA. Von Tieren und Menschen’ until Sunday 30 August 2026. The exhibition opened on 27 March and examines the relationship between humans and animals in more than 100 works from the 20th and 21st centuries, drawn together under a term borrowed from biology.
Animalia, from anima, the Latin word for breath or soul, was coined by the naturalist Carl von Linné (1707–1778) for a category that takes in humans and animals alike. Against that model of equal rank, the museum argues, human dealings with animals are marked by a clear hierarchy, and depictions of animals — from ‘man’s best friend’ to humanisation, objectification and exploitation — say as much about the people who made them. The exhibition also puts Animalia forward as a thought experiment: a shared model of life in which animals figure as fellow creatures and co-actors.
Véronique Abpurg and Annkathrin Weber curated the show. Its artists run from Gustav Klimt, Franz Marc, Marc Chagall, Fernand Léger, Pablo Picasso and Meret Oppenheim to Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Damien Hirst, François-Xavier Lalanne, Maria Lassnig, Birgit Jürgenssen, Lena Henke and Raphaela Vogel. The catalogue is published by Verlag für moderne Kunst and sells for EUR 39 in the museum shop.
For the closing days the museum lists the family workshop ‘Die Tiere sind los!’ for ages three to twelve on 23 August at 10am, the children’s holiday workshop ‘Wo die wilden Wunder wohnen’ for ages six to twelve on 26 and 27 August at 10am and 2.30pm, and Sunday guided tours of ANIMALIA at 3.30pm, preceded at 2.30pm by a tour of the collection presentation ‘KLIMT ⇄ WARHOL’. Radio Wien’s Art Afterwork on 27 August, with DJ Mel Merio, is the museum’s last of the summer; Radio Wien is a media partner of the exhibition.
Programming continues after ANIMALIA. From 19 September the collection devotes a large solo exhibition to the German-Austrian artist Elisabeth von Samsonow, running to 28 February 2027 with sculpture, painting, drawing and film. The museum also announces ‘Basquiat: Sound Between the Lines’, an evening in which the pianist Alexandra Silocea, appearing there for the fifth time, sets ‘Red Savoy’, ‘Collaboration’ and ‘Mr. Greedy’ against classical, contemporary and jazz-inflected piano music.
The Heidi Horten Collection is at Hanuschgasse 3, 1010 Vienna.
