On this audio-tour through the Museum Angerlehner in Thalheim bei Wels we will have a closer look at the rooms of the modern museum's building and give insights into the collection and our exhibitions. Contemporary art from the region and beyond is waiting for you!

Museum Angerlehner – a platform for contemporary art!  | Cultural Places

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This tour was designed by the team of the Museum Angerlehner in cooperation with the Wortklauberin and Cultural Places. We hope you enjoyed it! Museum Angerlehner Ascheter Str. 54 4600 Thalheim bei Wels 07242/224422-0

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Welcome! Thank you very much for your interest in a tour through the Museum Angerlehner. We are looking forward to accompanying you. This tour will give you an insight into our collection, the history of our house and the current exhibitions. Have a good time!
The museum is located in Thalheim bei Wels and was opened on September 12th 2013. It is the second-largest private museum in Austria and houses the private art collection of its founder, Heinz J. Angerlehner, which grew and developed in about 40 years. Different exhibitions of contemporary art, mainly from Austria and Germany, are displayed on an exhibition area of around 2,500 square meters.
The almost exclusively privately-funded museum is an initiative of a passionate art collector who wishes to share his intensive devotion to art with as many people as possible.
"Through art thoughts, moods and visions can be expressed in a very special way. The fascinating world of art has enriched me personally. The power with which each and every piece of art knows to address the beholder is supposed to become alive for many people", the museum’s founder explains.

Welcome to the Museum Angerlehner!

We are now standing at the entrance on the south side of the impressive building. The black façade with its light installations by the Austrian artist Waltraud Cooper captivates us due to its minimalistic design. The building originally was an assembly shop and converted to a modern museum for contemporary art between 2012 and 2013.
When approaching the building, the striking front design with its iridescent black metal elements catches the eye. The ambitious schedule for the reconstruction of the museum on the banks of the river Traun could be met. The constructions started in May 2012. Prior to this, the best project was selected in an elaborate international architectural competition.
16 architectural firms from all over Europe participated with their ideas in an anonymous contest. It was a wonderful surprise to learn that the company Wolf Architektur from Grieskirchen – at that time still young – was awarded the contract.
The architect Wolf Grossruck gave the museum its industrial-minimalistic appearance. In 2014 it was elected the "Building of the Year" by the State of Upper Austria. And even the Austrian Post Office acknowledged the Museum Angerlehner in 2014 on the occasion of its one-year-anniversary with a special issue stamp in the series "Modern Architecture".

Entrance – from an industrial building to a museum of contemporary art

Let’s enter the innards of the museum. The clear, industrial-minimalistic design is once again noticeable in here. Besides the huge and bright exhibition rooms the viewable storage area is another architectural attraction. The foyer, on the other hand, is a meeting point for everyone interested in the fine arts.
In the foyer we are greeted by a generous, bright room which invites to dwell and browse. The studio right beside offers sufficient room for the education of art. Additionally, there is a separate seminar room on the upper floor, also called "Salon", where smaller exhibitions take place.
The subsequent rambling event hall with the viewable storage area constitutes the museum’s centerpiece. As its name implies, the location is venue to many different events like, for example, openings.
In the event hall several main works of the collection Angerlehner are located, among them pieces of Xenia Hausner, Markus Prachensky, Erich Steininger und Rudolf Leitner-Gründberg. The architecture’s concept is being made visible here: Deliberately, all existing walls are held in black and all new components – like the upper floor – in white. The museum presents itself as an architecturally clearly structured and spacious building. 
The museum developed out of the former workshops and assembly halls of the company FMT (Ferro-Montagetechnik), which was founded in 1980 by the initiator Heinz J. Angerlehner. Thus, with considerable ingenuity a disused engineering factory was turned into a museum for contemporary art. The aim in doing so was to change as little as possible and yet as much as necessary in order to obtain a house that acknowledges its past and looks into the future at the same time.

Foyer and events hall – the architecture

As we enter the large exhibition hall now, the size of the room will attract our attention. The wide hall offers the perfect setting for shows with large formats. From the upper floor you will repeatedly have views and impressions of the exhibition in the ground floor due to the open design.
Another feature is constituted by the pillar-free exhibition hall in the ground floor. With its barely 1,200 square meters it stands alone in the surrounding area. Four further exhibition rooms in the first floor with around 800 square meters in total supplement the attractive range of rooms for art shows. The interconnection and the vistas into other floors result in a homogenous impression for visitors.
After the renovation of the former workshops and assembly halls, an indoor crane, as an indication of the former production facility, could be preserved. Every once in a while it is called to action and servers as a part of an installation or as a presentation device for paintings. From the window, from the front side of the room, you have an impressive view of the surrounding Traun-Au, a local recreational area of Thalheim and Wels. Two bridges were specially constructed: one over the "Aiterbach" and another over the Traun, which connects the two places.
In the large exhibition hall primarily collective exhibitions or presentations from the own collection are on display. But also solo exhibitions of artists are hosted with pleasure if the formats of their artwork allow it. Based on the spaciousness and the remarkable height of the walls of up to 10 meters, the selection and hanging of the artworks in the large hall can definitely be a great challenge.

Large exhibition hall – from an assembly hall to an exhibition room

The viewable storage area in the events hall offers fascinating insights into the collection. A large part of the paintings is hung up on extensible registers. At regular intervals the drawers are moved in order to grant new insights into the collection. Also sculptures are stored here.
Needless to say, the museum’s center is represented by the collection Angerlehner with its currently more than 3,000 pieces of art. The majority is stored in the viewable storage area that offers around 6,000 square meters of hanging space for the fine arts. The works are organized alphabetically ordered by artists on a total of 63 hanging files.
Graphic works are stored in a light-protected viewable storage area in the building, which is not accessible for visitors though.
The museum‘s founder periodically calls on the viewable storage to push single registers forward and back. Like this, visitors have the opportunity to always cast a new glance on the collection.

Viewable storage area – insights into the art collection

Heinz J. Angerlehner was born in 1943 in Wels and founded his own company, the Ferro-Montagetechnik (FMT) in 1980. For almost three decades he managed his business with great success. For an even longer period of time he has been collecting art: He started almost 40 years ago. Today the collection Angerlehner with its more than 3,000 artworks is one of the greatest private collections in Austria. The primary focus is placed on Austrian painting since 1950. Besides, Heinz J. Angerlehner passionately collects art on the art market, independent of current trends.
A special focus of the collection is on Austrian painting in its development during the last 70 years. Great names like Arnulf Rainer, Hermann Nitsch, Siegfried Anzinger, Günter Brus, Herbert Brandl, Valie Export or Christian Ludwig Attersee are equally represented as young artists. 
In the last years also figurative painting has evolved and become an integral theme of the collection. Remarkable from an art-historic point of view are the works of neorealistic painting, especially those of artists of the so-called "Leipziger Schule".
Sculptures, graphic works and art photography complement the collection. 
However, the collector has always deliberately supplemented his emphasis on Austrian art by international comparative examples, whereby Heinz J. Angerlehner is still guided exclusively by his own capacity of enthusiasm: “I only buy to what I bear relation and what particularly appeals to me.”

Collector and collection – a passionate collector

In terms of content the exhibitions in the Museum Angerlehner are oriented towards the main themes of the collections. Like this, primarily Austrian artists are displayed. In addition to that there are special shows and collective exhibitions. In the “Salon” especially young and aspiring artists have the opportunity to show their work.
Around ten exhibitons per year can be visited in Museum Angerlehner. The shows in the large exhibition hall are available for a longer period of time, while the exhibitions in the "Salon" with usually younger positions change more frequently. The four rooms on the first floor are generally used for smaller collective displays or presentations of graphic works.
Contentwise, the exhibition programme is closely directed towards the focus of the collection. The emphasis is placed on Austrian painting since the 1950s. Additional core themes are abstract-expressionistic and informal movements.
Solo and collective exhibitions are fitted with works from the own collection and with external loans – for example from galleries, museums or private persons. If you look at the list of displayed artists so far, you can spot the international context, a balanced distribution of (male and female) established artists as well as the strong reference to Austria.
Undoubted highlights during the past years were for example "Wiedergeburt der Unsterblichkeit – Zeitgenössische Kunst aus China" and "Jetzt Druck machen – Druckgrafik aus Leipzig" as well as solo exhibitions of Franz Grabmayr, Lena Göbel and Maria Moser, Aris Kalaizis, Josef Bauer, Erich Steininger, Franziska Maderthaner or Erró and not to forget the collection exhibitions "Figuration zwischen Traum und Wirklichkeit", "Kunst_Koordinaten" and "Zweimal 6".

Exhibitions – where art gathers

At the moment we are in the museum’s light-flooded studio, which is venue to numerous creative processes for people of all ages. Art education plays a central role for us, as it is the interface between museum and visitors.
Museum Angerlehner strives to make a distinctive contribution to an intensive art discussion in the public. In our opinion it is important for all parts of our society that more people deal with contemporary art. With our art education activities we would like to offer various opportunities to experience art at first hand. Through our programmes visitors regardless of age are supposed to refine their creative skills.
Art education at the Museum Angerlehner offers a comprehensive workshop-programme for school classes. These workshops deal with topics regarding current exhibitions and allow the participants to link the experiences made with own, hands-on work. For individual visitors of all ages we organize a variety of workshops, talks with artists or curators, guided tours, lectures, and workshops with artists and a lot more. The light-flooded atelier/studio with view of the surrounding nature provides room and inspiration at the same time.

Art education – an intensive encounter with art

The museum Angerlehner hosts the first Austria-wide museum-like solo exhibition of Monika Kus-Picco until February 21st, 2021. Since 2018, in the run-up to the exhibition in Paris, Monika Kus-Picco has worked exclusively with medicine as hues for her partly large-sized, partly medium-sized paintings. “Expired” medicinal products and liquids are used instead of industrially produced paints and colors mostly on a white base. This gives the paintings a completely new range of colors and an intriguing inner tension. And, by the way, emerge like canvas paintings of the classic tradition and of the modern tradition of abstraction. The fact that it is about “painted” medicine or painting with medicine is always visually present to the beholder and produces a highly intensive pictorial art. These up to now unknown hues that apparently come from this non-painting starting material make up a new form of beauty. The exhibition was being planned for quite some time. Due to the current medical and sanitary crisis it obtains a tremendous topicality.

Monika Kus-Picco – Medizinbilder – Medicine Paintings. 2018–2020

In the graphic rooms of the upper floor oil paintings by Martin Praska from the last ten years are displayed.Praska is a master of figuration and representationalism. Meticulous is his execution – with soft flaws, plays of light and shadow and hightlights. All the more the depicted subjects contrast with the ambience, the diffuse spaces and landscapes. He paints abstractly, messes around and rages expressively, calculates precisely, blends and accentuates subtly.And just like Praska draws from different styles, equally unrestrainedly he borrows from art history. Caravaggio is cited, just as Rubens, Ingres and Dürer. The old masters are shaken and stirred until a new cocktail of contemporary painting is ready for degustation. Needless to say that nothing is plain and simple here. The works are of sophisticated complexity and have developed over years, as well as gone ways and wrongs ways, the artist himself explains. Of course, these paintings are narrational and polysemous. Because of this, they are all but easily intelligible and quickly categorizable.

Martin Praska – Short Stories

The gallery rooms show the sculptural and pictorial works by Mario Dalpra. The artist’s fascinating sculptures are colorful bio-, zoo- and anthropomorphic creatures with oftentimes amazingly flexible and limber bodies. The artist, born in Vorarlberg and resident in Vienna and India, skillfully plays on the claviature of a philosophic-minimalistic art experience.Already the exhibition’s title “Be Inspired” anticipates the artist’s philosophy and message: “The freedom of art, offering the beholder a purely individual and collective art experience without compulsion concerning concept and installation which is detached from the diction of the art market and an art-scientific interpretation.“Be Inspired” is the answer to our hectic and overloaded world, the greed for consumption and constant entertainment of which gives rise to alienation – within ourselves and in the interaction with “the other”.Dalpra’s works place a special emphasis on sensations, joy and the discussion of aesthetics of surfaces. He does not remain short on a reflective response to a current hurtful and disturbing world.

Mario Dalpra – Be Inspired. Sculptures and Paintings

Crayon works by Hannah Winkelbauer are displayed in the museum’s “Salon” under the title “Lost &amp; Found”. The artist focuses her view on unremarkable objects and addresses with a painstakingly fine technique the beauty behind apparently hideous surfaces. In doing so resonate topics like transcience, environmental consciousness and the aesthetics of everyday life.The subjects range from rotten vegetables over dead animals to cut-off pigtails and lost clothes. “Winkelbauer lets us notice the beauty in the plain and ordinary – even in the discarded and morbid, in a carelessly crumpled-up sheet of paper just as in a semi-rotten apple or in any vegetable.”, is how curator Günther Oberhollenzer puts it.Winkelbauer draws her subjects with crayons as accurately as possible on paper in order to later on mount them slightly elevated in an object frame. The artist does without backgrounds and like this places the focus on the objects and animals. The presentation in the object frame forms the neutral background and creates associations with show cases or scientific illustrations.

Hannah Winkelbauer – Lost & Found

Thank you very much for your support and your participation in the tour through the Museum Angerlehner. We hope you enjoyed it and you gained interesting insights.

Museum Angerlehner – a platform for contemporary art!

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