Spitzmaus Mummy in a Coffin and other Treasures

Design of the exhibition curated by Wes Anderson and Juman Malouf at the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna.

In 2012, the Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien launched a new exhibition series in which internationally renowned artists from various art genres put together a personal selection of objects from the museum's collections to create a show. This is no easy task, as the collections consist of more than four million objects and span a period of about five thousand years.

The third installment of this series was curated by filmmaker Wes Anderson and his partner, author and illustrator Juman Malouf. With the help of the curators and conservators of the Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, Anderson and Malouf selected more than 400 objects from all fourteen of the museum's collections. Among them are Egyptian, Greek, and Roman pieces from the Collection of Classical Antiquities, Old Master paintings, objects from the Kunstkammer and the Imperial Treasury, from the Hofjagd- und Rüstkammer, the Münzkabinett, the Collection of Ancient Musical Instruments, as well as objects from the Theatermuseum, the Weltmuseum, the Imperial Carriage Museum, and from Ambras Castle in Innsbruck. A handful of guests from the Natural History Museum also found a place in the exhibition. This time, special attention was paid to the depot holdings of the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna: more than 350 of the exhibited objects came directly from storage, many of them were presented publicly for the first time ever. The result was given the title "Shrew Mummy in a Coffin and other Treasures" and was on display in Vienna in 2018/2019. In close collaboration with the curatorial team, Margula Architects designed the exhibition architecture.

"Shrew Mummy in a Coffin and other Treasures" was a collaboration between the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna and the Fondazione Prada. The exhibition was on view at the Fondazione Prada in Milan starting in fall 2019. The curators* were Wes Anderson and Juman Malouf, as well as Jasper Sharp, Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna, and Mario Mainetti, Fondazione Prada. The exhibition was accompanied by a catalog with all images of the exhibited objects and text contributions by Sabine Haag, Jasper Sharp, and Wes Anderson.


ENTRANCE ARCHITECTURE Wes Anderson, Juman Malouf, Jasper Sharp (Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien), Mario Mainetti (Fondazione Prada)
EXHIBITION DESIGN Margula Architects with Wes Anderson and Juman Malouf
TEAM Itai Margula, Nora Pou, Marie Surminger, Alexandra Tatar, Jane Zandonai
LOCATION Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, Fondazione Prada
DURATION of the Exhibition VIENNA 6. November 2018 bis 28. April 2019
DURATION of the Exhibition Mailand 20. September 2019 bis 13. Jänner 2020
3D Panorama by Ardon Bar-Hama
TEXT The Spitzmaus Wunderkammer: Wes Anderson and Juman Malouf Rummaging Imperial Collections
by Sophie Olivotto
Vol 4 No 2 (2022): The Role of Urban Imaginaries