(8/5/12) Wien Museum

When in Vienna, it's important to remember that many shops and stores are closed on Sundays. This is due to the fact that it's such a Catholic city. However, this does not mean that there isn't still an endless amount of things to do. I surprised myself this morning by waking up in time to attend a Catholic mass at the Augustinerkirche before we had to meet up with everyone at the Wien Museum. A few fellow students and I crept into the back pews of the enormous, partially Gothic church alongside many other tourists. I suppose that is to be expected when the churches here are so beautiful. I know enough German to say "Excuse me, where is Kandlgasse?" (Entschuldigen Sie, wo ist Kandlgasse?) at two in the morning, but I certainly don't know enough to understand even a word of what is said at mass. Luckily, the music was universal and we didn't need to know German in order to enjoy it. It was quite a remarkably different afternoon for me, a young Jewish girl from California attending a Catholic mass in an old church in Vienna.

A quickly-taken snapshot of mass.

Next, we went off to do something that I am more natural at– museums. The Wien Museum, located right next to the Karlskirche, is seemingly droll on the outside, especially compared to the gorgeous Karlskirche next door, but contains endless artifacts of history and art from Vienna and beyond. I consider myself a bit more of an art person than a history person (blasphemy in this program, I know!), and was thrilled to find numerous paintings, from detailed landscapes of Vienna to nude drawings of young women. The latter, of course, refers to Gustav Klimt's work, which I had been excited to see since the beginning of the trip. His intricate, intimate style enticed me from the moment I first saw "The Kiss." After Dr. O, our brilliant tour guide, gave us yet another wonderful tour, we were free to go off on our own. After a pricey lunch, I returned to the (air conditioned) museum to finish looking at Gustav Klimt's drawings. The collection is endless, including many drawings that look more like an amateur artist's scribbles.

A Klimt sketch kind of reminiscent of "The Kiss."

I still adore Klimt's work, and am excited to see "The Kiss" when we visit the Belvedere, but it does make me wonder what should be considered art and what should be considered a "doodle." I also returned to the third floor on my own, which contained many gorgeous paintings that displayed a much more rural Vienna, charting the swift development of this rural city into the more urban city it now is. I found paintings of large groups of people, usually out at the theater or at a Viennese ball. This allowed me to connect some of the artifacts we viewed on Dr. O's tour with the bigger picture of an art/history museum. Art is history– it allows us to capture a certain time period, albeit in a more subtle manner,  becoming a snapshot of a person, a place, or a time (or perhaps all three). But more importantly, history can also be art. We viewed pots and bowls that were used for practical purposes, but had faces made on them for decorative purposes. These decorations indicate a historical time, but also indicate the significance of art and decor, even when practicality was of most importance.