THE MAGIC OF THE VIENNESE CAFÉ COMES TO LONDON
VIENNA CAFÉ 1900
13 - 24 October 2008
Royal College of Art , Kensington Gore, London SW7 2EU
This autumn the Royal College of Art will be hosting an exciting new exhibition, Vienna Café 1900, exploring the culture and design of the Viennese coffeehouse around the turn of the last century.The Anglo-Austrian Society is delighted to announce sponsorship for this event and offers a special event for all our members and friends of Austria on Monday 13th October 6pm. Click here for more details.
More about the exhibition:
Today's coffeehouse business is booming as more and more people seek a place to rest, work, eat or socialise in the busy city. Looking at how the cafés were part of Viennese life raises interesting questions about how we live and socialise in modern cities. The Viennese café was a monument to the fruitful wasting of time: an idea that has much to offer today's time-starved city-dwellers.In Vienna there were cafés for everyone: artists, intellectuals, the respectable bourgeoisie and the not so respectable. People gathered to chat, eat, read, work, play, gamble and argue in café in a city at the heart of an ancient empire. Like today, the café had an important place in the cultural and social life of the city. The fluid character of this social space stimulated the minds whose intellectual and creative achievements made such a dramatic contribution to the development of European modernity at this time.
In the exhibition visitors can explore the environment of the old Viennese coffeehouses through displays of historical photographs, graphics, film, sound and other ephemera. The coffeehouses were designed to provide comfort and luxury – something few people could afford at home in an overcrowded city.For more information contact the Anglo-Austrian Society
Tel: 01494 711116
Related web links:
www.bbk.ac.uk/news/news-releases/magic-of-the-viennese-cafe-comes-to-london
www.rca.ac.uk/viennacafe/index.html
www.kakanien.ac.at/weblogs/cfp_events/2008/05/conference++the+viennese+cafe