Francisco Carolinum

Discuss, experiment and explore with us! 💥 📸 When everything at the Francisco Carolinum revolves around photography, the appropriate accompanying program is a must: WHAT A NIGHT! invites you to combine exhibition, exchange and atmosphere on selected Fridays.🪩 As part of WHAT A VIEW!, the House for Photography and Media Art opens its doors for a vibrant after-work format: with inspiring guided tours of the exhibitions, hands-on workshops, and discussions with artists. Here, photography is not only viewed, but also discussed, experimented with, and explored further together. 🥂 The museum visit becomes a meeting place: drinks, relaxed music, and time for conversation create an open space for the art scene, photography enthusiasts, and the curious. WHAT A NIGHT! combines knowledge and enjoyment, professional perspectives and personal encounters – making Friday evenings a fixed point for everyone who wants to celebrate photography with us. 📍Francisco Carolinum Linz, UNESCO City of Media Arts 📅 Mark your calender: Fri, 24.04.26, 14:00-19:00 Fri, 08.05.26, 14:00-19:00 Fri, 22.05.26, 14:00-19:00 Fri, 19.06.26, 14:00-19:00 Fri, 26.06.26, 14:00-19:00

Which photograph is your favourite? Vote on site and help decide the final audience award. 😇 The @nachrichten.at space within WHAT A VIEW! presents the 30 most-voted works from the amateur photography competition realised in cooperation with the Oberösterreichische Nachrichten and Energie AG Oberösterreich. Selected through a public online voting from more than 200 submissions, the photographs offer diverse perspectives on the open theme of “nature” and reflect the many ways photography is practiced across Upper Austria. During the exhibition, visitors are invited to continue this participatory process by voting on site for their favourite image. 🗳️ 📍 Francisco Carolinum, Linz 📅 7 April – 02 August 2026 📸 (2&3) @bunterpixel , (1&4) @kunstdokumentationcom

We pay tribute to VALIE EXPORT and her unique artistic life’s work. Born in Linz, this artist has transformed contemporary art: radically, uncompromisingly, physically, politically, and with an intellectual acuity that continues to resonate today. As a pioneer of media, film, and performance art, she has not only created new forms of artistic expression but also shifted societal perceptions. Six years ago, in 2020, we had the privilege of dedicating a comprehensive presentation from the collection of Land Oberösterreich to her at the @fc_linz with the exhibition “VALIE EXPORT. Collection Care.” It was an exhibition that not only showcased works but also highlighted how carefully a museum must handle an artistic legacy that has long since become part of international art history. VALIE EXPORT remains one of Austria’s most significant artists and one of the great voices of an art that did not seek to please, but to transform. Photo: VALIE EXPORT, Geburtenmadonna, 1976, (nach Michelangelo Buonarroti „Pietà“ „Madonna della Febre“, 1498-1499), Vergrößerung 1980er Jahre, C-Print auf PE-Papier auf Schaumstoffplatte kaschiert, 183,5 x 143,5 cm, Land Oberösterreich, Sammlung Moderne und zeitgenössische Kunst © Bildrecht Wien, 2020

Starting from his closest surroundings, @georg_pm reflects on family, relationships, and shared experiences in “Universal thoughts: Least common multiple”. 📍 Francisco Carolinum Linz 📅 06.03.– 12.07.26

Bring your work, test a process, get direct feedback. 🗣️ This edition of WHAT A NIGHT! turns the museum into a space for exchange and practice: experiment with cyanotype in a hands-on workshop, or join the portfolio review with Maria Venzl, Genoveva Rückert and guests for insights and discussion. ➡️ 2-4 pm: Cyanotype Workshop ➡️ 3-5 pm: Portfolio Review 🎫 Free admission 📍Francisco Carolinum Linz, UNESCO City of Media Arts 📅 May 22, 2-7pm

Marriage is a recurring theme in Ewa Partum's work – from her radical 1980 performance Women, Marriage Is Against You!, in which she cut herself free from a wedding dress and gift wrap labelled 'For Men', to Private Performance, 1985, her wedding at a Berlin registry office. 💒 By transforming her own marriage into a work of art, Partum turns this patriarchal institution into a conceptual gesture, continuing her critical engagement with patriarchal and political structures in society. The work consists of the official marriage documents and a photograph showing Partum in front of the registry office – in front of the couple her work Autobiografia, 1971–1974: a banner on which her name is composed of the names of all the artists, thinkers and philosophers who have influenced her. A double gesture: marriage as a conceptual act, identity as a collective inheritance. 💍 Curated by Nathalie Hoyos and Rainald Schumacher (@officeforart ) @artum_foundation 📍Francisco Carolinum, UNESCO City of Media Arts 📅 27.02.26 - 28.06.26

This was the second edition of our “What a Night” event series, and this time it spotlighted local talents, shaping the photographic scene in Upper Austria, whose works are on display in the “What a View” exhibition - Christian Azzouni, Madgi Chan, Jana Ehls, Siegfried A. Fruhauf, Katharina Loidl & Arnold Walter 🥰 A guided tour followed, offering fresh angles on selected works from the exhibitions. 🥂 🔜 Next up: WHAT A NIGHT #3 on Friday, May 22 - Portfolio & Feedback 📸 2:00–4:00 p.m.: Cyanotype Workshop: Experiment with one of the oldest photographic techniques. 🗣️ 3:00–5:00 p.m.: Portfolio Review with Maria Venzl, Genoveva Rückert, and guests – feedback, discussion, insights. 📍Francisco Carolinum Linz, UNESCO City of Media Arts 📅 May 22, 2-7pm 📸 Sophia Hartsch, @bunterpixel

In the series Nähe (Selbst mit Sohn), @annegretsoltauofficial addresses the relationship between mother and child. She works directly on the negative with an etching needle, gradually dissolving the image. Mother and child merge and begin to fade into one another, held in an ambivalent tension between dependency and love. Rather than reproducing idealized images of motherhood, Soltau makes its complexity visible. Since the 1970s, she has approached motherhood as a lived, bodily experience shaped by social expectations. In the context of Mother’s Day, her work opens up a more differentiated perspective—moving beyond celebration and closer to the realities behind the image. 🤝🏼 An exhibition by @staedelmuseum , Frankfurt am Main, in cooperation with the Francisco Carolinum, Linz Curatorial concept @svenja_grosser Curated by @michaela_seiser @galerieanitabeckers 📍Francisco Carolinum, UNESCO City of Media Arts 📅 27.02.26 – 28.06.26 📸 Annegret Soltau, Closeness/self with son, 1980-1985, Archive Annegret Soltau

Is it possible to delete analog photos? 💥 In AG + X (2025/26), @sebastianriemer works with a ton of silver gelatin prints discarded by fashion photographer F.C. Gundlach after more than four decades of work. Intended for disposal, the photographs were handed over to the artist under one condition: their motifs should not remain visible. Riemer developed a chemical process to extract the silver from the prints. As the images detach and dissolve in liquid, the silver precipitates out. The photographs are effectively erased, leaving behind curling sheets of paper stripped of their imagery. Over several years, the recovered silver will accumulate into the material for a new sculpture - transforming an archive of images into a condensed, physical form. ➡️ His work is part of the group exhibition “Some Secrets on Photography”, curated by @ruth_horak , that deals with the suspicion, that not all the secrets surrounding photography have yet been revealed. 📸 📍 Francisco Carolinum Linz 📅 06.03.– 12.07.26

Extended until 2 August 2026: Georg Petermichl, Some Secrets on Photography and What a View remain on view for a little longer. 💥 Three exhibitions, three perspectives on photography: 💫 @georg_pm deals with photography as a social and psychological instrument. Starting from the smallest personal cosmos he broadens his view to larger contexts like mass tourism. 📸 WHAT A VIEW! - a group exhibition with over 80 positions of contemporary photography in Upper Austria - celebrates the medium in all its diversity. 👀 The group exhibition “Some Secrets on Photography” deals with the suspicion that not all the secrets surrounding photography have yet been revealed. 📍 Francisco Carolinum Linz 📅 until August 2 📸 @kunstdokumentationcom

What happens in the studio before an image comes into being? In Behind the Screen / Der inwändige Blick, Gregor Schmoll turns attention to the studio as a site where images are constructed. Referencing Johannes Vermeer’s The Art of Painting, the installation evokes the artist’s workspace as a place of observation and staging. A grid of black and white floor tiles extends this idea into the exhibition space. At its center, 49 Polaroids document Schmoll’s Vienna studio from multiple angles. Sets, props, and lighting are visible, yet the actual artworks remain absent. Instead, the focus shifts to the conditions of their production. What emerges are fragments of a process, glimpses of scenes before they become images. ➡️ His work is part of the group exhibition “Some Secrets on Photography”, curated by @ruth_horak , that deals with the suspicion, that not all the secrets surrounding photography have yet been revealed. 📸 📍 Francisco Carolinum Linz 📅 06.03.– 12.07.26 📸 (1) Gregor Schmoll, Behind the Screen, (2-3) Rainer Iglar

The catalog for my exhibition THESE DAYS I THINK A LOT ABOUT THE DAYS THAT I FORGOT is now available. The publication focuses on the exhibition, which can be read as a portrait of three women and generations: her grandmother, her mother, and myself. Drawing on her own childhood, Breit explores how memories are formed, passed down, and consciously shaped. Through photography, she creates moments with her mother that are not only experienced but also captured and preserved as images. With texts by @kohout and @maria_venzl Catalog presentation and artist talk: Thursday, May 7, 2026, at 6 p.m. @softcover.shop Stumpergasse 53-55, 1060 Vienna Anna Breit in conversation with Maria Venzl (curator at the @fc_linz ) and Sebastian Gansrigler (Softcover). We offer insights into the book’s creation and discuss photography as a medium of memory. Installation shots: @kunstdokumentationcom Graphic Design: @bureau_est The catalog is also available at Softcover, in the Francisco Carolinum museum shop and online. Editors: @alfred_weidinger & Manfred Mandl-Kiblböck for OÖ Landes-Kultur GmbH, Maria Venzl Editor: Maria Venzl