Radical Openness: Visiting Vienna’s Children’s Museum

Radical Openness: Visiting Vienna’s Children’s Museum

Andrea Zsutty. Photo: Alexei Korolyov
As Vienna’s children’s museum Zoom celebrates its 30th anniversary, director Andrea Zsutty reflects on how art and play can bring communities together and reshape cultural institutions, especially at a time when Austria’s politicians are promoting an isolationist ‘dominant culture.’
by Alexei Korolyov

Listen to this piece read by the author.


 

Andrea Zsutty is not your typical Austrian museum director. Outspoken and tanned, with long curly hair, she does not mince her words or shy away from difficult subjects – there are surprisingly many on her mind, given that she runs Zoom, Vienna’s children’s museum in the MuseumsQuartier. But then again, Zoom is anything but a run-of-the-mill children’s museum.

Its inaugural exhibition, in 1994, was an interactive showcase on Picasso, and it already displayed the hallmarks that define the museum’s approach today: a focus on engaging with artworks, an emphasis on play and games, and tactile experiences designed for the visually impaired. “That’s why I really think this is the right place for me to work, because I always had to bridge the gap, in the regular museums, between the art piece and the audience,” Zsutty, an art historian and curator by training, explains as we tour the museum’s rooms, currently being prepared for an exhibition celebrating its 30th anniversary. For this occasion, several artists have created dedicated spaces – again featuring interactive elements – that reflect Zoom’s rich legacy of making art accessible to children.

 

Zoom’s latest exhibition, Art and Play. Photo: ZOOM Kindermuseum / Paul Pibernig
Politics and Leitkultur

Yet this hands-on approach to art isn’t the museum’s sole focus; it also takes on more immediate, political issues. In 2006/2007, and again in 2018 – a year before Zsutty took over as director – the museum hosted exhibitions addressing the refugee crisis, a response to Vienna’s changing demographics. Recent data shows that 59% of pupils in the city’s primary schools, and 78% in secondary schools, do not speak German as their first language. Unlike Austria’s political class, Zsutty doesn’t see this as a problem: Zoom employs many staff whose mother tongue isn’t German, and they often make an instant connection with the children, especially if they share a language. But that’s not even the main point, she says. “It’s really important that the kids see, this is a museum and the people working [here] look like me, there is maybe someone having the same language problem as me. And this is the really important part, that you meet different people and you can decide as a kid: I connect to this person or this person.” Zoom has around 125,000 visitors a year – both children and their accompanying adults – so there’s plenty of connecting going on.

Given Austria’s current political climate – with the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) on the rise and the People’s Party (ÖVP) not far behind, especially on immigration – this is a rather subversive position. Earlier this year, when Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer called for an Austrian Leitkultur – meaning dominant culture – to be reflected in cultural policy and education, Zsutty wasn’t having any of it. Zoom is an Austrian institution, yes, and it’s funded by the City of Vienna, but she refused to buy into that narrative. “It’s not important that we give the kids access to some kind of local culture, because the themes we deal with are universal. Being as inviting as we can, as accessible and inclusive as possible – these are my tasks.”

 

Zoom’s latest exhibition, Art and Play. Photo: ZOOM Kindermuseum / Paul Pibernig
Children teach as much they learn

This radical openness raises a broader question: why do cities need children’s museums at all? As Zsutty herself acknowledges, children can be both the best and worst museum visitors. “Adults are always polite, they just listen, and it’s hard to receive a reaction sometimes, and kids, when they are bored, they show you.” In her view, children teach just as much as they learn – an idea that turns the usual way of thinking about museums and culture on its head. “It’s not only that we deliver something, I don’t see our work as [a transaction]: you pay for the ticket and then you consume. It’s more like giving and taking. So we learn from the kids and therefore we have to listen to them. And this is only possible if you give the space and the attention to the kids, that you really look at them and say: you are welcome here.”

The museum’s latest exhibition, Art and Play, opens on October 3. True to Zoom’s ethos, it encourages children to engage directly with the artworks, including a walk-in sculpture by artist Alfredo Barsuglia. Artist Esther Stocker has crafted a space that plays with visitors’ visual perceptions while also incorporating interactive elements. And, in partnership with Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum, children can explore the high-resolution digital reproduction of the painting Children’s Games by Pieter Bruegel the Elder.

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