United Kingdom
Cafés and coffeeshops are an everyday part of city living and in Vienna in particular they are at the heart of city life. Around 1900, a visit to a Viennese café was a spectacular experience, newspapers were displayed on custom-made stands, waiters wore tailcoats and ceilings were decorated with elaborate chandeliers.
Today’s coffeehouse business is booming as more and more people seek a place to rest, work, eat or socialise in the busy city. Looking at how cafés were an essential part of Viennese life raises interesting questions about how we live and socialise in the modern city today. The Viennese café was a monument to the fruitful wasting of time: an idea that has much to offer today’s time-starved city-dwellers.
As Dr Simon Shaw-Miller, Senior Lecturer in History of Art, Birkbeck, University of London suggests: “It would be no exaggeration to claim that but for the Viennese coffeehouse modern life and culture would not be the same for any of us.”
Professor Christopher Frayling, Rector, Royal College of Art says: “For those of the current generation who thought the coffeehouse started with Starbucks, this exhibition will come as quite an eye-opener.”
In Vienna there were cafés for everyone: artists, intellectuals, the respectable bourgeoisie and the not-so-respectable. People gathered in cafés to chat, eat, read, work, play, gamble and argue in a city at the heart of an ancient empire.
The café provided a place where the rigid social hierarchies of the day could be relaxed a little. The fluid character of this social space stimulated the minds whose intellectual and creative achievements made such a dramatic contribution to the development of European modernity at this time.
The café provided a place where the rigid social hierarchies of the day could be relaxed a little. The fluid character of this social space stimulated the minds whose intellectual and creative achievements made such a dramatic contribution to the development of European modernity at this time.
In Vienna Café 1900 visitors can explore the environment of the old Viennese coffeehouses through displays of historical photographs, graphics, film, sound and other ephemera.
The exhibition is accompanied by a festival of Viennese themed events
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including concerts, talks and film screenings taking place at the RCA, the Austrian Cultural Forum and the Royal Academy of Music. Renowned traditional Viennese pastry and chocolate company Demel will run a café at the RCA during the exhibition for visitors to sample the delights of a genuine kaffeehaus.
The exhibition is part of a three-year research project by the RCA History of Design department and the School of History of Art, Film and Visual Media at Birkbeck, University of London. The project is led by Dr Tag Gronberg and Dr Simon Shaw-Miller of Birkbeck and Professor Jeremy Aynsley of the RCA. The exhibition is curated by Dr Charlotte Ashby at the RCA. It is mounted with the support of the Austrian Cultural Forum, The Coffeehouse Owners’ Association of Vienna, the Anglo-Austrian Society, hotel Das Triest , The Austrian Chamber of Commerce, The Austrian National Tourist Office and The Vienna Tourist Office. Project research is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.
