Day four: Wien - Albertina

Albertina has one of the largest graphic arts and photography collections in the world, and its current exhibitions consist of:

• Monet bis Picasso: die Sammlung Batliner (Monet to Picasso: the Batliner Collection)
  
• Gerhard Richter: Retrospektive (Gerhard Richter: Retrospective)
• Fotographie und das Unsichtbare (Photography and the Invisible)
• Das Zeitalter Rembrandts (The Age of Rembrandt)

Glenda and I decided that this list of exhibitions should quench Jocelyn's thirst for arts over the last couple of days; so our family spent some time at the museum this afternoon.



Jocelyn got really chirpy when we were going through the Picasso and Richter sections, but was less so at the Rembrandt-era exhibit. The highlight for me was the photography exhibit which features pictures from 1840 to 1900. These pictures depict the probe of the "invisible" world: from moon shots to x-ray pictures (radiographs) from Henri Becquerel and others, Ernst and Ludwig Mach's sonic shock shots of projectiles, and other magnified pictures of the microbe world. This exhibit was actually shown at SFMOMA after we left the Bay Area, but I was lucky enough to see it in Vienna (out of all places) today.

There were also 21 exquisitely decorated Habsburg staterooms in Albertina. While we were admiring the elegance of the decor, we were surprised to find a few Michelangelo sketches tucked in a corner in one of the staterooms.