MAK Vienna unveils new galleries with reimagined carpet displays

As you ascend the stairs to the new permanent gallery A dedicated to carpets and textiles at the Museum für angewandte Kunst (MAK), Vienna, the museum's glorious Mamluk carpet gradually comes into view. Once up, you can get really close to the carpet resting on a chest-high platform, with no glass between you and the 500-year-old weaving to distort the image. The silk shimmers in the light. The effect is like that of mist over a lake, making the intricate geometric pattern shift and change in front of your eyes. Onlookers might feel invited to reach out a hand and touch it—but this would be a bad idea, says curator Lara Steinhäußer, as a very loud alarm will go off.

There is another ingenious feature. The new galleries were devised in collaboration with Milan-based design studio Formafantasma, and it was their idea, working with local architect Michael Wallraff, to put in the mirror panel above the carpet. This provides a different view, in which the pattern is much easier to read and the carpet can be understood as a whole-almost like a printed image. It would have been a difficult endeavour to install and support a glass mirror of the required size, risking seven years of bad luck as well as serious damage. Instead, the Italian design studio opted for a thin reflective film.

Lara Steinhäußer is behind the new presentation, inaugurated on 24 March 2026, with the support of the museum's director, Lilli Hollein. When Hollein joined the museum in 2021, she knew that she wanted to refresh some of the displays. Now, winding your way around the museum to get to the textile gallery, you pass through the 'Vienna 1900' permanent exhibition, reconceived by the artist Markus Schinwald and opened earlier this year. Wiener Werkstätte textile samples wait at the foot of the stairs.

The museum's previous carpet display (closed since 2023) was, to put it mildly, somewhat controversial. Based on the idea of the 'flying carpet', the high-concept installation largely overshadowed the pieces themselves, as well as attracting criticism regarding its Orientalist flavour. The new presentation represents a clean break in more ways than a change of location from the ground floor to the upstairs galleries. There is not a diagonally suspended carpet in sight, and textiles are now showcased as well as carpets.

The latter is a big improvement, allowing the museum to put some of its many excellent pieces on view. The plan is to rotate the display every two years or so, as the exhibits on show are only the tip of the iceberg of one of the world's most prominent collections of carpets and textiles. One such textile is the frankly enormous shawl designed by Amédée Couder in 1839. We call it a shawl, but it was clearly a showpiece; its size is less suited to taking a turn around the garden as to dumping a body, should you not have a carpet to hand.

A lack of carpets was one of the muttered complaints overheard at the opening of the MAK's new look, and it's true that there are only so many on view. Carpets are notoriously difficult to display and take up an awful lot of space. Among what we can currently admire, however, there are some real highlights.

The aforementioned Mamluk carpet is undoubtedly the star of the show, and the only surviving carpet of its type with a silk pile. It came to the MAK after the First World War, having previously been owned by the Habsburgs. This is the first time it has been shown to the public following extensive conservation.

If you turn your head, you find yourself looking at another Mamluk carpet, beautiful in its own right but a poor relation once you've come to know its silk cousin. A petite 'Polonaise' carpet represents the Safavids, with some vibrant pops of colour amid the metal thread. From Turkey we see a 'Tintoretto' carpet, ca. 1600, with a motif in its top niche more familiar in kilim weaving.

Next to Couder's cashmere shawl, a north Indian millefleurs carpet can be found, which happens to be the first carpet ever bought for the museum collection-acquired from the Mekhitarist Congregation in Vienna in 1868. They were an Armenian Catholic monastic order, and a very interesting bunch-however, outside the scope of this article.

The juxtaposition of the millefleurs carpet and shawl reveals one of the main themes of the curation: the interweaving of cultures and mobility of motifs. Kashmir (at least the pashmina of the rug!) and cashmere bring out the European fashion for shawls, be they Kashmiri originals or European interpretations and embellishments. Couder's shawl carries a depiction of Nowruz, the Iranian new year, being celebrated adds; it another layer of cultural entanglement.

The 'Polonaise' carpet can be found next to some 'Polish' (made in Iran and Turkey for export) and Polish sashes; and the 'Tintoretto' with its kilim-esque niche adornment sits close to a North African silk- and metal-thread hanging with prayer niches inhabited by mosque lamps. An Ottoman textile fragment sports some of the most tightly coiled cloudbands I have ever seen, as well as the dynasty's trademark cintamani motif-allowing for connections with China and Buddhism. These motifs also occur in the adjacent saddle blanket, which was a pleasant surprise given that recently we have had equestrian textiles on the brain (while producing the publication for The Textile Museum's 'Adorning the Horse'-see article in this issue).

In a bank of drawers, visitors can discover smaller textiles. Here, in addition to the museum's famous Byzantine silk fragment featuring Samson, we find an 18th-century embroidery with a star chart (astrology being very much on trend). An intricate little purse, clearly inspired by earlier textile traditions, is the one remaining work of a maker forced to flee Vienna during the Nazi rule. Her family, based in the UK, recently donated this piece to the museum.

Text panels draw out connections, object biographies, interesting provenances and the history of the museum. Audio-guide stations provide narratives in a different media. We learn how the 'Tintoretto' and several other carpets were stolen during a burglary in 1959, with the thief leaving a note saying that he was in effect only borrowing them to make copies. This sounds worryingly like something we might have heard before, and I am relieved to hear that the thief was arrested in Paris the following year and all objects returned.

The panel on kilims introduces some Austrian history, in the form of the occupation and administration of Bosnia-Herzegovina by Austria- Hungary between 1878 and 1918. The company Philipp Haas & Söhne used the designs of Josef von Storck, director of the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts, to produce kilims in Sarajevo. These were advertised as 'Bosnian kilims' and sold throughout Austria-Hungary. They were also marketed specifically to the upper echelons of Muslim society in Bosnia- Herzegovina. Is the exhibited example of this production the most beautiful kilim you have ever seen? No, unless you've only seen one kilim (apologies to Mr von Storck). But that is missing the point.

It becomes clear that the carpets and textiles in the new galleries at the MAK have been chosen as means to tell interesting stories. That is in line with contemporary institutional practice and hopefully a way of finding a broader, and younger, audience for these objects. The role of the museum is no longer believed to be solely about showcasing so- called 'masterpieces'. There are now more strands to edifying the public, one of the original purposes of the muscum, than simply displaying exemplary objects.

The MAK was founded in 1863, taking as its model the South Kensington Muscum in London, the early iteration of the V&A. The South Kensington Museum was officially declared to be a 'schoolroom for everyone', but a second emphasis was placed on instructing British designers and manufacturers. In a modern interpretation of this aim, Steinhäußer hopes that the MAK's collection may inspire designers and makers. There is a wealth of techniques on show: different styles of weaving, knotting, printing, painting, embroidering. I have a soft spot for a European knitted jacket from the first half of the 17th century-it's an unusual inclusion.

Nods to contemporary design can be found along the final wall, assuming you have made your way around the gallery clockwise. A bright fabric by Nathalie Du Pasquier screams 'Memphis', and a floral panel by Josef Frank looks as fresh as when it was designed in the 1940s. Frank fled Austria and came to Sweden, where he collaborated with the founder of Svenskt Tenn, Estrid Ericson. His are some of the company's most iconic designs and they are still in production today. My grandmother, my mother and I all have his designs in our homes, which says something about their enduring appeal.

Rounding off the display is the only piece taken from the museum's design, rather than textile, collection: Virgil Abloh's 2019 machine- made carpet Markerad for IKEA. Next to the silk Mamluk carpet, it's an interesting reflection on where the value of an object resides, on the scale from design and designer to material and skilled labour.

Going from new to old, stopping in the medieval times rather than going all the way to Late Antique Egypt (represented by a fragment with a head framed by vines and grapes), we arrive at the 'Göss antependium' from ca. 1260. This Romanesque silk embroidery on linen is almost complete and delights in geometrical ornamentation. It's a highlight piece but one which, with its religious iconography and age, could seem a little impenetrable to the average visitor-not everyone finds the Middle Ages cool. Here the challenge is to make the old relevant and interesting.

The museum does a good job in pointing out details that invite close looking, such the little unicorn in between the Virgin and Gabriel in the Annunciation scene. The antependium is also noteworthy for its depiction of two medieval women, its benefactress Abbess Kunigunde II and Adala, founder of the abbey.

At the opening press conference, the team behind Formafantasma explained that the subtle pinks of the display cases and staircase railing reference the 'hidden' women related to many of the textiles on view. This project underscores the role of exhibition design not only as a display strategy, but as a form of mediation between past and present,' they explain. This is a good reminder that a museum display is never a neutral assembly of things in a space; here it is emblematic of creativity, exchange and the fates of individuals and objects throughout the ages.