The Wiener Aktionismus Museum (WAM) is a private art museum in Vienna, Austria, devoted to Viennese Actionism. It opened in the city's Innere Stadt district on 15 March 2024.

The museum was established by private collectors who had acquired the Friedrichshof Collection in 2022. Its holdings include works and documentary material by Günter Brus, Otto Muehl, Hermann Nitsch and Rudolf Schwarzkogler.

History

The museum's collection is based on the Friedrichshof Collection, which was assembled in the 1980s with assets of the commune led by Otto Muehl. After the commune dissolved around 1990, the collection became the property of a cooperative with more than 300 members. A portion of the collection was acquired by mumok in 2003.

In 2022, Philipp Konzett and a group of other collectors acquired the remaining collection. ORF reported at the time that it comprised about 880 oil paintings and 16,000 works on paper, as well as photographs, sculptures and other material. The collectors involved in the establishment of the museum were Reza Akhavan, Jürgen Boden, Daniel Jelitzka, Philipp Konzett, Dirk Ströer and Christian Winkler.

The museum opened at Weihburggasse 26 on 15 March 2024. Its first exhibition, Was ist Wiener Aktionismus? (What is Viennese Actionism?), concentrated on work produced between 1957 and 1973.

In September 2025, former Albertina director Klaus Albrecht Schröder took over the museum's management from Konzett. Jürgen Boden remained commercial managing director, while Konzett continued as an adviser. The museum was subsequently renovated and expanded. It reopened in March 2026 with an exhibition of early works by Hermann Nitsch.

Collection

The collection consists of paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, films, sculptures and documentation of performances. Its principal focus is the development of Viennese Actionism from the late 1950s to the early 1970s and the work of Brus, Muehl, Nitsch and Schwarzkogler.

The museum presents the collection in changing exhibitions rather than as a fixed permanent display. It also exhibits loans from other public and private collections.

Controversy

Otto Muehl and the Friedrichshof Collection

The museum's ownership of the Friedrichshof Collection has led to debate over its presentation of Otto Muehl. After his involvement in Viennese Actionism, Muehl founded the Friedrichshof Commune, which eventually established its principal base at Friedrichshof in Burgenland. He exercised extensive control over the community. In 1991, he was convicted of offences including rape and sexual abuse of minors and sentenced to seven years in prison.

The collection later acquired by the museum had been assembled by the Friedrichshof community during the 1980s. This provenance became part of a broader dispute over whether works made by Muehl during the commune period could be exhibited independently of the circumstances in which they were produced.

The issue was discussed publicly at the Wiener Festwochen in June 2025. Former Friedrichshof member and psychotherapist Ruth Bourgogne described some works produced in the community as inseparable from abuse suffered by participants. Artist Sophia Süßmilch accused the WAM of glorifying perpetrators and criticised its treatment of Muehl's legacy. Museum representatives defended exhibiting his work while arguing that his crimes had to be addressed in its presentation.

A January 2026 report in the taz described objections by survivors of the commune to the circulation and exhibition of works made during the Friedrichshof period. The article also reported calls by victims' lawyer Maria Windhager, representatives of the federal counselling centre on sect issues and others for a fuller investigation of the commune and its surviving archive.

Exhibition plans in 2026

When Schröder became director in September 2025, the museum announced that he would curate a retrospective of Muehl scheduled for September 2026. The plan attracted renewed criticism following the publication of investigations into Muehl and the Friedrichshof community, including a November 2025 cover story in DATUM.

In January 2026, the museum said that it had abandoned the plan for a comprehensive retrospective. It instead intended to show selected periods of Muehl's work, beginning with paintings from the 1986 series Unfälle im Haushalt. The museum said that works depicting victims of abuse would not be shown.

The discussion also concerned comments by Schröder on the historical context of sexual abuse at Friedrichshof. In March 2026, Der Standard reported criticism of statements in which he had referred to changing attitudes towards sexuality and theories associated with the period. Lawyer Maria Windhager and child-protection specialist Hedwig Wölfl rejected this framing. Former adult members of the commune also objected to using the intellectual climate of the period to explain Muehl's conduct.

The same month, Austrian culture minister Andreas Babler announced an interdisciplinary expert group to develop recommendations for dealing with works of art connected to contexts of violence. The debate over Muehl was cited as the immediate occasion for the initiative. The WAM separately announced that it was preparing an ethics code dealing with art, crime, victims and responsibility before showing Muehl's work.

The museum subsequently announced an exhibition titled Otto Muehl. Kunst am Abgrund, scheduled to run from 10 September 2026 to 10 January 2027. The museum stated that it would not show works depicting victims of abuse and that it had sought permission from identifiable people shown in works included in the exhibition.

In August, Der Standard reported that the museum had used Muehl's 1986 painting Erdbeben 2: Judith und Dieter (Unfälle im Haushalt) to advertise the exhibition. One of the people depicted had agreed to the use of the image. According to the newspaper, the other had died and his widow and daughter had not been contacted. The museum subsequently replaced the image on its website. Windhager argued that the case raised questions about the rights of people depicted in works produced within the coercive environment of Friedrichshof.

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