Wien Museum Magazine
Austria’s first digital museum magazine.

‘With Austria's first digital museum magazine, the Wien Museum is breaking new ground in communicating museum work. It was inspired by the online offerings of major museums in the USA and Great Britain, which are pioneers in the field of storytelling.’

This statement by the Wien Museum on the occasion of the launch aptly describes the magazine's aspirations. Working with those responsible to conceive and design it and continuously feed it with great content is very, very close to my dream job.

The high number of subscribers and over 600 online articles confirm the relevance of this media format, which is much more than just a museum blog.


Film documentaries

Producing documentaries for the magazine is doubly exciting: on the one hand, we create coherent films on topics related to Vienna, and on the other hand, we gain interesting insights behind the scenes of museum work.

This was the case, for example, during filming in the museum depot, where we filmed the fashion collection, which is not open to the public, and visited the largest object in the collection: the nine-metre-long whale from the Prater restaurant ‘Zum Walfisch’.


Visit to the Praterwal

The Vienna Wurstelprater is an amusement park that has been in continuous operation since the 18th century, uniquely combining rides, restaurants and showman culture in a freely accessible urban space. The restaurant ‘Zum Walfisch’, founded in 1782, was a Prater institution and a popular venue for Viennese people for many generations. 

A nine-metre-long whale above the entrance, built in the early 1950s, delighted not only the children among the visitors with its water fountain. In 2013, the restaurant closed down, and with it, the whale. Thanks to a dedicated entrepreneur, it was saved from destruction and eventually found its way to the Vienna Museum. 

Restorer Regula Küenzli and her team took on the task of restoring the metal giant.


The incredible rescue of an old advertising wall

In 2019, the Vienna Museum commissioned us to document the removal of an old advertising wall on Favoritenstraße.

During the week-long shoot, the entire team was anxious about whether the severely damaged wall could be salvaged.

The shop sign is on display in the permanent exhibition of the Vienna Museum as a testimony to the fate of Vienna’s Jews under National Socialism. Adolf Grünsfeld founded the shop in 1906, and in 1938 it was ‘Aryanised’. His son Hans fled to Bolivia, where he committed suicide in 1955.

The documentation of the removal itself was as emotional as the history of the location: until the very end, it was unclear whether restorer Anna Boomgaarden and her team would be able to save the sign undamaged.


Dezember 2023

In December 2023, we encounter the whale and the advertising wall again in the newly opened Wien Museum. The tonnes-heavy whale ‘Poldi’, which floats beneath the ceiling of the entrance hall, plays a central role as an iconic anchor object.

The huge whale is one of the most prominent exhibits, was brought into the new building in spectacular fashion and is deliberately staged there as an eye-catching attraction for the public – a symbol of the ‘new’ Wien Museum and its narrative style.

Photos: Wien Museum / Lisa Rastl