The World of Tomorrow Will Have Been Another Present

May 23, 2025 to April 6, 2026

The World of Tomorrow Will Have Been Another Present

The exhibition The World of Tomorrow Will Have Been Another Present draws connections between works of classical modernism and contemporary art, between the 1920s and the 2020s. The exhibition features five large-scale installations, five exhibitions in one exhibition, linked together by the participating artists’ shared interest in the topic of time.

Nikita Kadan, Barbara Kapusta, Frida Orupabo, Lisl Ponger, and Anita Witek were invited to select works of classical modernism from the mumok collection and enter into a dialogue with them. In an exchange and in debate, confronting issues against the backdrop of disparate temporal conditions, through formal analogies and aesthetic contradictions, the five artists tackle both historical and contemporary subject matters: be it image politics between propaganda and critique, from careless to sensitive practices of appropriation, body images between identity politics and universalism, or the constitution of society between the desire for clear-cut categories and the complexity of a thoroughly networked world.

Curated by Franz Thalmair
in collaboration with Nikita Kadan, Barbara Kapusta, Frida Orupabo, Lisl Ponger, and Anita Witek.

Artists: Alexander Archipenko, Hans Arp, Giacomo Balla, Willi Baumeister, Rudolf Belling, Hans Bellmer, Herbert Bayer, Karl Blossfeldt, Louise Bourgeois, Constantin Brâncuşi, Victor Brauner, André Derain, Friedl Dicker-Brandeis, Marcel Duchamp, Raymond Duchamp Villon, Max Ernst, Alberto Giacometti, Julio González, Juan Gris, George Grosz, Albert Paris Gütersloh, Raoul Hausmann, Florence Henri, Johannes Itten, Nikita Kadan, Barbara Kapusta, Friedrich Kiesler, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Henri Laurens, Fernand Léger, René Magritte, Kazimir Malevich, André Masson, Vladimir W. Mayakovsky, László Moholy-Nagy, František Muzika, Frida Orupabo, Alicia Penalba, Antoine Pevsner, Franz Pomassl, Lisl Ponger, Man Ray, Germaine Richier, Aleksander Mikhailovich Rodchenko, August Sander, Oskar Schlemmer, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Victor Servranckx, Edward J. Steichen, Alexander Stern, Nikola Vučo, Anita Witek, Fritz Wotruba, Ossip Zadkine

Download area

Press release The World of Tomorrow

Credits

01a Bayer

Herbert Bayer
hands act, 1932
35.4 x 28 cm
b/w photograph
mumok - Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, donation by Oswald Oberhuber 1979
© Bildrecht, Wien 2025

01b Kapusta

01b Kapusta

Barbara Kapusta
Hand (Upright), 2018
39 x 29 x 15 cm
Porcelain, transparent glace, platinum
mumok - Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, acquired with support of BKA, Sektion Kunst, 2018
© Bildrecht, Wien 2025

02a Bellmer

Hans Bellmer
The Mouth, 1935
16 x 16 cm
Silver-bromide print, colored
mumok - Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, acquired in 1978
© Bildrecht, Wien 2025

Nikita Kadan, Victory (Small White Shelf), Reconstruction of the model for the monument “The Three Russian Revolutions: 1825, 1905 and 1917“, by Vasyl Yermylov, 1922–1925, 2017

02b Kadan

02b Kadan

Nikita Kadan
Victory (Small White Shelf), Reconstruction of the model for the monument “The Three Russian Revolutions: 1825, 1905 and 1917“, by Vasyl Yermylov, 1922–1925, 2017
210 x 150 x 80 cm
Wood, color, ceramic cups, glass, concrete
mumok - Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, acquired with support of the Society of the Friends of Fine Arts Vienna, 2020
© Nikita Kadan

03a Gris

Juan Gris
Carafe, Glass and Newspaper, 1919
40 x 33 x 2 cm
Oil on canvas
mumok - Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, donation by Emanuel and Sofie Fohn 1994
© public domain

03b Witek

Anita Witek
Reflex Of Freedom, 2022
120 x 182.5 cm
Analog C-Print
mumok - Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, acquired with support of BKA, Sektion Kunst, 2022
© Bildrecht, Wien 2025

04a Magritte

René Magritte
Dieu, le huitième jour, 1937 (1976)
8 x 14 cm
b/w photograph
mumok - Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, acquired in 1995
© Bildrecht, Wien 2025

04b Ponger

Lisl Ponger
Wild Places, 2000
130 x 106 cm
Color photograph
mumok - Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, acquired with support of BKA, Sektion Kunst, 2006
© Bildrecht, Wien 2025

05a Schlemmer

Oskar Schlemmer
Abstract Figure, 1921 (1962)
107 x 63 x 21 cm
Bronze casting
mumok - Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, acquired in 1962
© public domain

05b Orupabo

Frida Orupabo
Untitled, 2020
84 x 135 cm
Collage, mounted on aluminium
mumok - Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, On loan from the Austrian Ludwig Foundation, since 2021
© Frida Orupabo

06 Baumeister

Willi Baumeister
Wallpiece Black-Pink, 1923–1929
116 x 76 cm
Oil, wood, sand on plywood
mumok - Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, acquired in 1967
© Bildrecht, Wien 2025

Katharina Murschetz
T:+43-1-525 00-1400
F:+43 1 52500-1300
katharina.murschetz@mumok.at

Katharina Kober
T:+43-1-525 00-1309
F:+43 1 52500-1300
katharina.kober@mumok.at

Published on December 1, 2024

Select Tickets:

The World of Tomorrow Will Have Been Another Present

Press contact