Exhibit at Austrian Cultural Forum in New York gives a new perspective on beauty

by Jessica Festa on

The Austrian Cultural Forum in New York is currently hosting Beauty Contest, an exhibit featuring 20 international artists focusing their work on their interpretation of beauty. Some of the artists call upon their own experiences being a gay/lesbian, transgendered, or exhibitionist living in eastern Europe, while others comment on beauty’s evolution in terms of society. Visitors can expect these visions to be presented through an array of mediums, including sculpture, video, photography, and painting.

The majority of the artists working on this exhibit live and work in Vienna, Austria, however, there are still some artists who grew up in Austria and moved to New York, and others who have been raised in various American cities. Artists you may recognize include Cindy Sherman, Matthias Herrmann, Kalup Linzy, and Evangelia Kranioti.

The exhibit runs until January 3, 2012, and on certain dates there will be special events held as part of the Beauty Contest program:

  • October 19- A panel discussion will be held at 6:30PM, moderated by Gia Kourlas, the dance editor at Time Out New York as well as a dance critic for the New York Times. Other members of the panel will include French historian, dancer, and choreographer François Chaignaud, American author of The Man in the Grey Flannel Skirt Jon-Jon Goulian, Austrian dancer and choreographer Silke Grabinger, and the curatorial advisor for the exhibition Beauty Contest, Salette Gressett. The discussion will focus on “how emancipatory artistic reflection and practice has fought to reveal the hidden structures of repression toward gender, race, and age and to shake off antiquated visual preconceptions”.
  • November 10- A performance by Austrian artist Maria Petschnig will take place at 7:30PM. It will consist of video clips and live action that suggests fantasies, transitioning from the sensual to the grotesque. The performance will question the difference between public and private as well as one’s actual self verses the staged self.
  • Every Wednesday- Private tours are led at 5PM by co-curator Andreas Stadler.

The gallery is located at 11 East 52nd St. New York, NY 10022 (between Madison and 5th Ave) and the exhibit is open daily from 10am – 6pm.

Austrian pop-up store opens in Nolita, New York, in October

by Jessica Festa on

Austria comes to Nolita, New York, this Fall from October 5-19, 2011, with the Taste of Austria pop-store store. For two weeks, the Openhouse Gallery will be transformed into an authentic Viennese coffeehouse, complete with marble tables, traditional Sacher wallpaper, and Sacher cups, under the name The Sacher Cafe. Along with delicious Austrian food fare, such as the Sacher Torte, a thick, chocolate cake separated by layers of jam and topped with whipped cream, there will also be cultural happenings. Enjoy a free film screening, sample some of the best wines from Austria, listen to a concert by Austrian composers, or sit in on some Austrian storytelling.

Aside from learning about Austrian culture through food, music, art, and film, patrons can also enjoy the fact that they are doing a good deed, as part of the proceeds from the event go towards helping City Harvest, a charity that works to feed the hungry in New York.

While almost all of the events for a Taste of Austria are free, you will still need to get a ticket. Click here to see the schedule of events and reserve your spot.

The Openhouse Gallery is located at 201 Mulberry St, between Kenmare St. and Spring St. Take the 4, 6, or 6X to Spring St., the J to Bowery St., or the N or R to Prince St.

Hours for the event are 12PM-9PM, Sunday-Thursday, and 12PM-10PM, Friday-Saturday.

Video of the Day – Through the Alps

by Stephen Greenwood on

The Alps. Stretching from Austria and Slovenia in the east through Italy, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Germany and France in the west, it is one of the greatest mountain ranges in Europe and arguably the greatest range to navigate by car (or motorcycle) in the world.

Today’s Video of the Day captures one man’s motorcycle trip through Austria, Italy, Switzerland, & France along routes such as the Stelvio, the Silvretta, and the Grossglockner; all of which are extremely impressive feats of construction & maintenance. While there isn’t any description or storytelling, it’s a great way to experience the sights and sounds of the Alps.

Have you captured an amazing road adventure? We want to see it too! Share your videos with us in the comments below, or upload photos to our Flickr pool and it could be the next Photo/Video of the Day.

Explore secret underground tunnels beneath Germany and Austria

by Melanie Renzulli on

A vast network of caves, tunnels, and chambers lie beneath the surface in parts of southern Germany and northern Austria, but not even archeologists know why they exist. Called “erdstalls” or, more colorfully, “goblin holes” (Schrazellöcher), these mysterious labyrinths, estimated to be about 1,000 years old, connect churches, castles, cemeteries, and other landmarks of the Central European landscape. Were they medieval escape routes from castles? Wine cellars? Elfin hollows? Theories on the erdstalls’ utility range from the practical to the fantastical.

Not surprisingly, the entry points to many of these tunnels can also be accessed from the basements of old farmhouses and inns. One such inn is the Gasthöf Wösner in Münzkirchen, Austria, where innkeeper Vinzenz Wösner offers “guided crawls” of the tunnel network below his property. Wösner’s erdstall, which extends for about 25 meters (82 feet) and ranges in height from 3 meters to just 0.7 meters (9 feet to just over 2 feet), is one of approximately 500 erdstalls that have been found in Austria. The German state of Bavaria, which has around 700 erdstalls, “is literally perforated with these underground mazes.”

Have you ever had the chance to crawl through an erdstall? Do you know of any inns, churches, or other sites that allow you to access these odd underground networks? Let us know!

Auction of Hitler family portraits raises questions about Nazi memorabilia

by Sean McLachlan on

Family portraits of Hitler’s parents are going up for auction.

Craig Gottlieb Militaria, a leading auction house in California, will be auctioning off paintings of Alois and Klara Hitler via Gottlieb’s website from September 1 to 17. Gottlieb is also selling Hitler’s desk set. The shop is open to prospective buyers by appointment.

The subject of Hitler and Nazi memorabilia comes up regularly here on Gadling. An article about a Hitler tour around Germany started a flame war, and my discussion about the other meanings of the swastika got some interesting and somewhat more level-headed responses. More than sixty years after the fall of the Third Reich, these symbols still elicit strong reactions.

This raises all sorts of questions about how we portray the past, and what should and shouldn’t be included. In Germany and Austria, for example, it’s illegal to display the swastika expect in specific historical contexts. My article on swastikas probably couldn’t get published in a German magazine because it skirts the edge of the law. Other countries display these items freely. At the Imperial War Museum in London you can see a variety of Nazi items. An Orthodox Jewish friend commented that such a context is OK. It makes her wince to see it, but it’s part of history and needs to be discussed.

On the spectrum of what’s acceptable and what’s not, museum displays are on pretty safe ground, although it took many years before a Hitler exhibition was allowed in Germany. But what about selling Nazi memorabilia? Gottlieb’s store is full of SS items. He’s even written a book on SS Totenkopf (“Death’s Head”) rings and currently has 44 such rings up for auction. Some countries ban selling Nazi memorabilia, as does eBay, yet an article in Forbes estimates the sale of these items to be in the hundreds of millions.

%Gallery-129938%I’m a military historian and collector myself. I’m also a struggling writer with a kid to feed, so my collection is pretty small. We collectors buy these things because they give us an immediate connection to history. Yet the thrill I feel when reading a postcard from the Western Front or holding a Civil War bullet is far different than what I feel when I see a swastika flag covering a coffee table. Yes, that’s an example taken from experience. I don’t have any Nazi items in my collection and I’m not interested in buying any.

London is my favorite place to shop for militaria. Provincial Booksellers Fairs take place all over England and offer up lots of rare books on military and other subjects. Shops in places like Grays Antique Markets and Camden Passage Islington offer a huge variety of medals, weapons, and uniforms. One thing I’ve noticed is that there are two types of shops: those that sell Nazi memorabilia and those that don’t. Those that do often have a lot of it. In one shop I saw an entire set of instruments from an SS marching band.

I asked a shopkeeper who didn’t stock Nazi items why he made that decision.

“Because I don’t having those people in here,” he said.

“Perhaps they’re just interested in history?” I offered.

He shook his head and replied, “That’s not why they buy it.”

While I won’t go as far as to suspect anyone fascinated with the Third Reich as being a closet Nazi, I do have to wonder what they get from it, and shake my head in amazement at how much power Hitler and his goons still have over our emotions sixty years on.

Attached is a gallery of the kind of Nazi memorabilia prized by some collectors. What do you feel when you see them? Do you think they should be for sale? Would you accept one as a gift? Is it OK to have them in museums? Tell us what you think in the comments section!

[Photo of Klara Hitler courtesy Wikimedia Commons]