VIG feels that art and culture are an important factor in a society’s quality of life, and that it is rewarding to take responsibility in this area. VIG and its group companies and principal shareholder Wiener Städtische Wechselseitige therefore provide assistance to artists and cultural projects.
Examples of cultural commitment:
Ringturm.Art Exhibition
The Group has been a committed supporter of the arts and artists since the 1920s, and has developed into a highly active collector. Today, the Vienna Insurance Group has a remarkable art collection in Austria, focusing on painting and the graphic arts from 1945 to the present, that was exhibited to the public for a limited time.
From the middle of October 2010 to the middle of March 2011, a cross-section of the Vienna Insurance Group’s collection was presented for the first time in a special exhibition presented by the Leopold Museum in Vienna titled Ringturm.Art. More than a hundred works of art were presented, including works by Irene Andessner, Christian Ludwig Attersee, Herbert Boeckl, Herbert Brandl, Robert Hammerstiel, Peter Kogler, Oskar Kokoschka, Josef Mikl, Eva Schlegel, Hubert Schmalix, Peter Weibel, Max Weiler and Otto Zitko. This project was made possible by the principal shareholder Wiener Städtische Wechselseitige.
Web@rchiv Austria
The Web@rchiv of the Austrian National Library was launched in 2008 and is dedicated to collecting and archiving the entire webspace for the nation of Austria. The Web@rchiv Austria (Web@rchiv Österreich) has been accessible to the public since June 2010. The project will provide future readers and scientists access to websites that have already disappeared from the live web. In this way, the Austrian National Library has extended its activities from the preservation of printed materials to the preservation of information published on the Internet for posterity. This project received an honourable mention in the 2010 Maecenas Art Sponsoring Awards.
The Morning Line Istanbul
The Vienna Insurance Group has provided support to the Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary (T-B A21) since 2005. The foundation promotes contemporary art by commissioning unconventional projects and promoting their distribution. T-B A21 presented “The Morning Line”, a sound installation, in the Istanbul European Capital of Culture 2010 art programme. The installation by Matthew Richie and Aranda\Lasch explores the interplay between different artistic and scientific disciplines, such as architecture, music and mathematics. VIG and the Turkish group company Ray Sigorta were the main sponsors of the project.
