KOWANZ. ORTNER. SCHLEGEL // Exhibition at Leopold Museum Vienna - 08.10.2025

Opening of the exhibition
KOWANZ. ORTNER. SCHLEGEL
Wednesday, 8 October 2025, 7 p.m.


Exhibition: 9 October 2025 to 11 January 2026
LEOPOLD MUSEUM, Museumsplatz 1, 1070 Vienna

The MQ Libelle, opened in 2020 on the roof of the Leopold Museum, is the first architectural extension of the Vienna’s MuseumsQuartier (MQ) since it was completed in 2001. With the MQ Libelle and its terraced landscape, a total work of art was created, a collaboration by architects Laurids and Manfred Ortner and Austrian artists Brigitte Kowanz († 2022) and Eva Schlegel.

O&O Baukunst designed the Leopold Museum, the Kunsthalle Wien, and the Museum of Modern Art Ludwig Foundation Vienna (mumok) in the late 1990s. From the beginning, Ortner & Ortner envisioned the MQ Libelle as a platform floating above the cultural area. Drawing from their urban utopias of the 1970s and 1980s, they further developed this vision in a series of large-format chalk drawings, now presented with other related items in a focused exhibition at the Leopold Museum.

The artwork created for the MQ Libelle—Lichtkreise by Brigitte Kowanz and veiled by Eva Schlegel—find resonance in the artists’ recent large-scale spatial installations in the Upper Atrium of the Leopold Museum, shown in Austria for the first time.


Further information about the exhibition: https://www.leopoldmuseum.org/en/exhibitions/149/kowanz-ortner-schlegel


Fig.: LIBELLE, L.O.M.O. MOrtner, 2020 — Chalk on paper