news
  • 15.3.2024 – 13.10.2024
    new project , exhibition

    "Water Pressure - Designing for the future" an exhibition of the MK&G Hamburg and Jane Withers Studio – looks at the water crisis from a global perspective. We were commissioned to come up with an installation celebrating water. The result "vital rain" is part of the exhibition and will stay permanently in the museums yard.
    more soon

    MKG Hamburg - Water Pressure

  • april 2024
    new project

    For the glassware company Lobmeyr we designed "ident" - drinking set No.287

    Identical shape, identical height - five individual glasses.
    The series was unveilded during Milan Design Week.

    Lobmeyr

  • april 2024 - ongoing
    factory tour

    We designed the factory tour for Laufen in Gmunden with a lot of details and small installations to guide and inform local and international guests.

    Laufen Gmunden

  • 5.4.2024 - 14.7.2024
    exhibition

    "inWastement" glass series is on show at the Klimabiennale in Vienna at the "design with a purpose" exhibition.

    Klimabiennale Wien

  • 15.9.2023 - 21.7.2024
    exhibition

    HEIMATEN. An exhibition and survey and an attempt to break with conventional takes on Heimat. the exhibition was shown at the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg (MK&G) in 2022. Our specially commissioned piece 'riparian cloud' is now also on show in Molfsee.

    Freilichtmuseum Molfsee

  • 01.06.2024 - 30.03.2025
    exhibition, adapted project

    A utopian insect swarm based on our 'curiosity cloud' developed with 13 children from Dresden swirls during the Kinderbiennale in the Japanische Palais. The participatory process resulted in 24 fantastic, colourful insects.

    Children's Biennale "Planet Utopia"

  • 30.05 2024 - 13.10.2024
    new project , exhibition

    All in! Re-Designing Democracy - Every aspect of democracy has been designed, therefore it can be designed differently. A new "Themis" claims in the exhibition for rights for Nature.

    Bundeskunsthalle

  • 10.05. 2024 - 23.06.2024
    exhibition

    20th anniversary international exhibition and series of events. Our glass project "access" is part of the exhibition.

    design without borders

bold and free

rarely shown objects of the museum mingle their way boldly and freely into the permanent collection

During the extraordinary times of 2020/2021, the MAK invited its visitors to a special expedition through the MAK’s permanent exhibition spaces. Rarely or never shown, special objects from the collection and hidden deposit treasures are staged by the design studio mischer’traxler together with curator Janina Falkner.  Custodians, but also staff from the collections, restorers, art mediators, and the director – have selected over 100 previously hidden masterpieces for this show that are worth seeing. With bold gestures, the objects “elbow” their way into spaces that are already taken, slip between them demanding their space to shine. Unexpected associations, humorous constellations and paradoxical scenarios emerge from this spontaneously curated, moving-in of things. “bold and free! The Invasion of Hidden Objects” is the second collaboration between design studio mischer’traxler and the MAK Vienna, after the relaunch of the MAK DESIGN LAB. Creative approaches to masterpieces of applied art once again convey the diversity of the MAK collection in an unconventional and imaginative way.

 

Bright green requisites and props complement the presentations of the new visiting objects. They help to highlight unusual perspectives and exciting aspects. Stories are read crosswise, more boldly, more freely, sometimes more profoundly or even nonsensically. Above all, the selected objects are freed from classically linear narrative modes and contexts.

audio-tour through the exhibition, read by Louise Prack (actress).
mak.at/boldandfree

Even though the wedding dress has been in the MAK Collection for 102 years, it has never been exhibited in the museum...
In this exhibition everything was ready for the entry of the bride into the glass-cabinet

A velvet hood with mask from the 16th century snuck in a glass cabinet with its burglary tool to mingle with precious venetian glasses and vases—ready for the peccadillo

“a chair from Chiavari (1850-1860) has made it to the roof of the Dubsky Room and claims it for its own. ‘Bold and free!’  it seems to shout”

Janina Falkner (MAK)

captured from the 1st floor of the museum

and captured with the whole room

Giovanni Battista and Francesco Piranesi's etchings are approaching utopia

the dragon on the carpet looks like it would bite off his own tail, therefore the titel "ichteppich" image credit: mischer'traxer studio

The Mail-Art-Bike by Padhi Frieberger might be just right to remove the visitor furniture in the carpet showroom

  • curators

    Janina Falkner (MAK Vienna), Katharina Mischer, Thomas Traxler

  • team

    Katharina Mischer, Thomas Traxler, Monja Hirscher, Elisa Polner, Lena Hoyos

  • graphic design and communication

  • image credits

    if not indicated otherwise,
    all images by MAK/Georg Mayer