Creativity Space

Creativity Space

Established in 2002, quartier21 was created as a place for art production that forms an independent cluster for art and culture of the 21st century within the MuseumsQuartier. The underlying concept is that contemporary culture is not produced and negotiated in museums, but in small studios, offices, agencies, archives, editorial departments, and event spaces, each acting autonomously and contributing unique elements.

Occupying about 7,000 square meters of space, quartier21 is an open infrastructure offering space and support to small and medium-sized cultural initiatives. It encompasses about 60 cultural initiatives, with core focuses on digital culture, fashion, and design. The spectrum of activities ranges from media art, conceptual art, and sound art to game culture, street art, fashion, design, photography, and literature. New subject areas and innovative approaches to production and presentation position the cultural initiatives in quartier21 outside of the traditional museum landscape.

Attracting more than 250,000 visitors a year, the quartier21 partners play a major role in the success of the MQ as a whole. The majority of events are offered free of charge. The educational program gives individual visitors, school groups, and other groups an opportunity to discover the diversity of quartier21 and gain an insight into the work of its cultural initiatives.

The quartier21 Artist-in-Residence program is an international art studio program. Since it was first launched in 2002, around 300 artists have already lived and worked in one of the seven art studios for about two months in the MQ complex. Grant recipients work in the fields of fashion, design, photography, street art, game culture, visual art, literature, conceptual art, film, theory, trans arts and media art.

Since fall 2009, quartier21 has been presenting multinational exhibitions and projects as part of the ‘freiraum quartier21 INTERNATIONAL' program series in an exhibition space by the same name. Free exhibitions focusing on quartier21's core creative disciplines (digital art, fashion, and design) are organized here in cooperation with the Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs as well as other partners from Austria and abroad.

The freiraum quartier21 INTERNATIONAL and Raum D / quartier21 exhibition and event spaces are part of quartier21. The Oval Hall, Arena21, Arena21 and Foyer of Arena21/Ovalhalle, Baroque Suites, and mezzanin space and ovalforum are event spaces that can also be rented by external organizations and individuals.