The Vienna Tourist Board and Art Basel in Miami Beach announce their continued partnership. The collaboration spans from an elegant Adolf Loos-inspired wine bar to a minimalist outdoor coffeehouse. Both locations will feature some of Ludwig van Beethoven’s most iconic compositions, celebrating next year’s 250th birthday of the world-famous “Viennese by Choice”. Beethoven moved to Vienna at the mere age of 22. The Austrian capital became the creative center for the musical genius, and the setting for the majority of his premieres. Viennese wine, grown within city limits, will be served at The Vienna Lounge in the Collectors Lounge, while in The Vienna Coffeehouse at the Botanical Garden, Viennese coffee creations will be served.
On Vienna’s collaboration with Art Basel in Miami Beach, Vienna Tourist Board Managing Director Norbert Kettner expresses his pleasure by saying, “We are thrilled to be back with a selection of Vienna’s finest exports here at Art Basel in Miami Beach. This year we celebrate being ranked “the most livable city in the world” for the tenth consecutive year by Mercer Study. Next year we will celebrate one of the reasons for Vienna’s cross-cultural appeal, the art of classical music, on the occasion of Beethoven’s 250th birthday, when the city of Vienna will be more musically inclined than ever”.
The Vienna Lounge and The Vienna Coffeehouse reference the city’s pillars of environmentally conscious community-centric artisanal design, utilizing sustainable materials and plentiful public green space. A staggering 53% of Vienna is public green space. Key design elements from the 2018 lounge have been repurposed to consciously craft a minimally wasteful space, while offering new elements based on how guests enjoyed the previous spaces. The seating areas are ample and offer different appealing options for sharing a drink and connecting, from the lounge to the coffeehouse. Public green space, cafés, and elegant bars are staples of Viennese community and culture.
The Vienna Lounge was designed by award-winning Viennese design studio EOOS. Its design pays homage to Adolf Loos, the radical representative of Viennese Modernism whose 150th birthday will be celebrated in 2020, and to the movement’s elegant and minimalist interiors. Selected glass objects from the Loos collection of Lobmeyr re-create the feeling of the iconic Loos American Bar from 1908, which is still open in Vienna today. Soft lighting further creates an inviting ambiance for patrons, as respite from the necessarily brilliant lighting of the fair. Embossed gold lettering on marble surfaces lends a generous impression of space. A WOKA chandelier, originally designed by Adolf Loos for the Viennese coffeehouse “Café Museum” in 1899, graces the bar. Viennese wine from the vintner Mayer am Pfarrplatz will be served daily, including their Beethoven Viennese White 2018 (Wiener Gemischter Satz DAC, Grüner Veltliner 2018) and Pinot Noir 2017. In 1817, Ludwig van Beethoven resided in the historic house of Mayer am Pfarrplatz while working on his Symphony N° 9. To honor the composer’s 250th birthday in 2020, the winery Mayer am Pfarrplatz created a special wine edition, arguably as lively as the famous symphony.
In The Vienna Lounge and The Vienna Coffeehouse, music by Beethoven will be played. Renowned classical musicians Aleksey Igudesman and Julian Rachlin have reinterpreted favorite Beethoven compositions, with tracks entitled “Beethoven Takes Five” and “For A Lease” that can be heard at The Vienna Lounge whereas in The Vienna Coffeehouse original compositions recorded by the Wiener Symphoniker will be played. A preview into the city of Vienna’s robust 2020 musical offerings, on the festive occasion of the 250th anniversary of Ludwig van Beethoven’s birth will be on hand. From Vienna’s House of Music indoor and outdoor installations, to the Austrian National Library’s “Sparks of the Gods” [the original manuscripts of Beethoven’s iconic compositions] programming will be diverse and of great acoustic and visual depth.
Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna’s Beethoven exhibition March 25 – July 5, 2020 presents masterpieces of fine art, combined and merged with music and silence. In paintings (Caspar David Friedrich), drawings (William Turner, Francisco de Goya, Jorinde Voigt) and sculptures (Auguste Rodin, Rebecca Horn, John Baldessari), film, video and performance (Tino Sehgal), this homage builds a visual bridge from Beethoven’s time to the present day. Further details and a list of events in 2020, including the Leopold Museum’s Beethoven exhibition, and the performance of Beethoven’s only opera “Fidelio” directed by frequent Quentin Tarantino character, Vienna-born Hollywood actor Christoph Waltz in Vienna can be found atmusic2020.vienna.info.
In the Botanical Garden, The Vienna Coffeehouse, also designed by Viennese design studio EOOS, will immerse visitors in the lush palms while they enjoy Viennese coffee. The pavilion disappears through mirrors dematerialized in the landscape of the Botanical Garden. A carefully applied ‘birdpen’ stripe pattern on the mirrors’ surface is recognized by birds so there is no risk of them flying into it, while being nearly invisible to the human eye. The image of the coffeehouse is created by the use of the traditional bentwood furniture. Coffee partner Julius Meinl, a family business for over 150 years, evokes Viennese coffeehouse culture worldwide – which was added to the UNESCO list of intangible cultural heritage in 2011.
While 2018 marked Vienna’s debut partnership with Art Basel in Miami Beach, the city has been partnering with Art Basel in Basel since 2013. Vienna’s integration with the Miami edition of Art Basel marks its increasingly connective role in the world of contemporary art and appreciation of direct flight routes to Austria’s capital. Travelers from the US can choose from up to 37 direct flights a week to Vienna. Services depart from Chicago, Washington D.C., New York City (both JFK and EWR), Miami and Los Angeles.
Housing and showcasing countless landmark art collections such as the world’s largest of works by Pieter Bruegel, Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele, Vienna offers visitors a rich calendar of art and music events throughout the year. Each fall, Vienna Art Week is staged to foster cooperation and cross pollination between global and Austrian art-world players. The city’s fair for contemporary art, viennacontemporary, annually welcomes over 30,000 guests, to see over 110 galleries, represented by 27 different countries. Over the past decade, 160 international curators have curated exhibitions focusing on such aspects as language in art, questions of identity, and a reflective look at the future, at the annual Curated by gallery festival. Parallel Vienna creatively utilizes temporarily vacant buildings as a presentation platform for contemporary art. In 2020, the ALBERTINA modern opens, presenting and housing over 50,000 contemporary works. The Sigmund Freud Museum re-opens, also in 2020, with a world-class contemporary art collection inspired by psychoanalysis.
For further information, please visit www.b2b.vienna.info
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