The Wiener Gemäldegalerie is generally acknowledged as an innovative foundation dating from the Enlightenment. But how did the presentation of the paintings change under Heinrich Füger (1806–1818)? While his hanging of the works was often misunderstood as arbitrary disorder, Alice Hoppe-Harnoncourt reveals the concept’s didactic innovation for the first time. The new arrangement only becomes clear when considering Füger’s role as an academic teacher and his artistic positioning between classicism and early romanticism. Füger broke with the static system of the 1780s to make space for contemporary art and a new classification of the ‘old schools’. This reorganisation is interpreted here as a visual representation of contemporary discourse during the transition to the museum’s institutional formation in the 19th century. Collection history of the Imperial Picture Gallery in Vienna, now part of the Kunsthistorisches MuseumThe gallery design under Füger is presented as an innovative development and visual representation of contemporary discourse
