Das stille Vergnügen
Master drawings from the Justus Schmidt Collection

Collecting and systematising objects often inadvertently provide us with insights into the mind of the collector. Both public and private collections are intimately linked to the times in which they came into being and may therefore legitimately be made the object of critical analysis. 

The collection of art historian Justus Schmidt (1903 – 1970) was bequeathed in 1971 to the Nordico Stadtmuseum. As a senior civil servant in the government of Upper Austria during the Nazi era, Schmidt was Kulturbeauftragter des Gaus Oberdonau, a senior official in charge of the culture portfolio of the province of Upper Austria and responsible for the art depots the monasteries of Kremsmünster and Hohenfurth. As a member of the ​“Sonderauftrag Linz“ he was involved in the acquisition and the safekeeping of Aryanised and otherwise expropriated works of art.

The selection of works put on display at the exhibition, from Rubens, Gauguin and Toulouse-Lautrec to Klimt and Kokoschka, is designed to facilitate a critical analysis of the collector and his times rather than to provide the traditional enjoyment of eminent works of art. It foregrounds the question of the extent to which a private collection bequeathed to a museum is capable of expressing untainted cultural identity, if its collector is compromised by his association with the Nazi regime. 

Exhibition design and the artistic interventions by Maria Bussmann and Simon Wachsmuth take these aspects into consideration.

Curator: Brigitte Reutner