On 4 July 1776, American Independence Day, the imperial envoy Giacomo Durazzo in Venice gave Duke Albert von Sachsen-Teschen (1738–1822) and his wife Marie Christine (1742–1798) a collection of engravings he had commissioned two years earlier.
Museum
Ambras Castle, consisting of the upper castle with the Spanish Hall and the lower castle, looks down on the village of Amras in the municipality of Innsbruck. Archduke Ferdinand II of Austria (1529–1595), from 1564 Count of Tyrol, lived in Innsbruck.
The institutional roots of the Heeresgeschichtliches Museum (Museum of Military History) go back to the eighteenth century, when a public exhibition of imperial armour, ceremonial weapons, war trophies and mementos was shown in the imperial armoury from 1759 in Renngasse, Vienna
The Historisches Museum der k. k.
The beginnings of the present-day Wien Museum date back to the 1860s, when the city council established a commission for municipal collections responsible for the acquisition and financing of objects for a future city museum.
The Joanneum was founded in 1811 by Archduke Johann together with the Styrian estates as the "Innerösterreichisches Nationalmuseum" ("Inner Austrian National Museum").
Some of the imperial art collections, the most important parts of which were obtained through the activities of Archduke Ferdinand II of Tyrol (1529–1595), Emperor Rudolf II (1552–1612) and Archduke Leopold Wilhelm (1614–1662), were available for limited public view from the early modern era onwa
From the 1950s, the Viennese ophthalmologists Rudolf Leopold (1925–2010) and his wife Elisabeth Leopold (born 1926) started an extensive art collection.
On 21 September 1962, the Minister of Education Heinrich Drimmel opened the Museum of the Twentieth Century in the adapted former Austrian pavilion for the 1958 Brussels Expo, now in the Schweizergarten in Vienna.
The foundations for the collections in the future Naturhistorisches Museum (Natural History Museum) in Vienna were probably laid in 1748 by Emperor Francis I Stephan (1708–1765), who acquired a mineral collection from the Florentine scholar Jean de Baillou (1684–1758).
The history of the Oberösterreichisches Landesmuseum dates back to the first half of the nineteenth century. In 1833, Reichsritter Anton von Spaun founded the "Verein des vaterländischen Museums für Österreich ob der Enns mit Inbegriff des Herzogthums Salzburg".
In response to the emphatic demand by the Secessionists led by Carl Moll and Otto Wagner for a public gallery of contemporary art as a counterbalance to the imperial collections, in 1901 Emperor Franz Joseph I agreed to the establishment of the Moderne Galerie.
The Österreichische Mediathek was founded in 1959/60 as Österreichische Phonothek with a view to building up an archive of audio documents, focusing on Austria. It was part of the Federal Ministry of Education.
Modelled on the South Kensington Museum in London, now the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Imperial Royal Austrian Museum of Art and Industry was founded in 1863.
The Österreichische Museum für Volkskunde (Austrian Museum for Folk Life and Folk Art), since 2013 also known for short as Volkskundemuseum, was created as a result of the popular interest in ethnological and folk life themes and the study of folk life and folk art established f
The k. k. Postmuseum, founded in 1889 by order of the Minister of Trade, opened to the public at the Rotunde in the Vienna Prater from 1891.
The Technisches Museum Wien (TMW) was founded in 1908 on the sixtieth anniversary of the reign of Emperor Franz Joseph in 1908 on the initiative of representatives of industry and commerce and opened in May 1918 as a private museum.
The Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum owes its name to Archduke Ferdinand Karl, the future Emperor Ferdinand I (1793–1875), under whose protection the museum association, which is still private today, was founded in 1823.
With its collections of ethnographic objects, historical photographs and books on non-European cultures, the Weltmuseum Wien is one of the most important museums of its type in the world.