Jewish Museum Spotlights Women of Wiener Werkstätte

A major exhibition opening in July 2026 will illuminate the central role women played in the Wiener Werkstätte, a pioneering Viennese design collective. Modernity and Opulence: Women of the Wiener Werkstätte runs from July 17 through November 15, 2026, at the Jewish Museum in cooperation with Vienna's MAK, Museum of Applied Arts.

The show focuses on the many Jewish women who worked as designers and artists for the workshop, as well as those who supported them as patrons. It argues their contributions were both underrecognized and essential to shaping modernist aesthetics in early 20th-century Vienna. The exhibition features over 200 objects across media including fashion, ceramics, graphic design, decorative arts, and painting.

The Workshop and Its Women

The Wiener Werkstätte was active from 1903 to 1932. It was founded by architect Josef Hoffmann, artist Koloman Moser, and industrialist Fritz Waerndorfer. The collective operated as a commercial enterprise dedicated to the synthesis of art and life, a concept known as gesamtkunstwerk. Its rise coincided with expanding economic opportunities for women in Vienna at the time.

The exhibition is organized thematically to shows the range and technical skill of approximately 30 Jewish women artists. A special emphasis is placed on ceramist Vally Wieselthier and textile designer Felice Rix-Ueno. Their prolific work, the source states, has had a lasting influence on those disciplines.

Progressive Ideals and Global Reach

The show illustrates how the collective's work aligned with progressive social reform and burgeoning feminist ideals. This was a period when women were fighting for greater access to education, economic opportunity, and universal suffrage.

The artists' influence extended far beyond Vienna. Their work was presented on the world stage at events like the 1925 Paris International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts. Participants there included Wieselthier, Rix-Ueno, Lotte Calm, and Mizi Friedmann-Otten. The Werkstätte's connection to Hollywood is also explored through films that featured its ceramics, such as The Kiss (1929) with Greta Garbo and Five and Ten (1931) with Marion Davies.

Patrons and the *Gesamtkunstwerk*

The final section of the exhibition demonstrates how women clients were vital to promoting the Werkstätte's vision. Notable socialite and patron Adele Bloch-Bauer and art critic Berta Zuckerkandl commissioned furniture and interiors. They wore the collective's fashions and used its stationery. In doing so, they embodied the spirit of the gesamtkunstwerk, where art infused every aspect of daily life.

The Jewish Museum presentation brings together this varied story of artistic innovation and patronage. It reveals a network of women who were key to defining Viennese modernism.