BWM Designers & Architects

“The Shape of Time”, an exhibition curated by Jasper Sharp, presents the old masters from the KHM collection in a conversation with contemporary works borrowed from private collections and other museums. These juxtapositions, 20 or so altogether, are scattered throughout the museum. This idea called for a straightforward, easily realisable concept to make the “exhibition within an exhibition” stand out. The challenge for the design team was in creating a discernible line of dialogue between the world-famous works and the contemporary pieces.

The intervention, designed by BWM Architekten, allows visitors to create new spatial references within the art exhibition. According to Johann Moser, the creative mind behind BWM’s exhibition designs, visitors notice the contrast between these exhibition areas and the rest of the museum as a kind of “shift in spatial feeling”. “Silver-coloured floor panels set the special exhibition apart from the continuum of the permanent exhibition,” he explains. “In addition, the guidance system also uses silver communication elements to convey information.” These subtle design interventions make it easy to identify the relation between the historical and the contemporary works.

The Shape of Time: Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien