museumsandstuff:

As part of their upcoming exhibition about the works of Gustav Klimt held in their collections, the Wien Museum (Vienna City Museum) has launched a competition on Facebook asking people to submit the worst of the Klimt kitsch. For those of you who haven’t been to Vienna: owing to the fame and popular appeal of Klimt’s works (especially The Kiss, 1907-8), tourist gift shops the city over are filled with every imaginable souvenir genre featuring the painting or interpretations of it. And from what I remember, the gift shop at the Wien Museum itself is no exception, even if a more tame example. 

But the idea of the museum addressing not just the artworks themselves, but also their fame and the way that they have been repurposed sounds like an interesting approach for the museum to take, especially as it is not a conventional art gallery, but a city history museum. I think it is also interesting how the gold and bombast of Klimt’s works is deemed more palatable and lends itself to these uses than the works of the Egon Schiele - a contemporary of Klimt’s - despite both being controversial in their time.