Madness & Modernity: Kunst und Wahn in Wien um 1900 (2010)

Madness & Modernity was not conceived as a touring exhibition. However, the impact of the Wellcome Collection’s presentation of the connections between Vienna's modernist and psychiatric communities was such that it was recommissioned and presented in an expanded form at the Museum for the History of Vienna (Wien Museum) in 2010. The catalogue was translated into German but the first part of the title – ‘Madness & Modernity’ – was retained in English at the request of Dr Wolfgang Kos, Museum Director, to signal to Austrian audiences that this was an ‘outsider’ perspective on Viennese modernism which, as the civic Museum's endorsement made evident, might be assimilated: ‘The exhibition, with its unfamiliar and sometimes also controversial approach to seemingly well known themes should inspire discussions and offer ways of transcending well-worn patterns of interpretation.’