Preserved

A large part of the collections of Austria’s most visited museum, The Naturhistorischen Museum in Vienna, is Austria’s most visited museum, but a large part of its collection is not open to the public. Dona Jalufka offers a look ‘behind the scenes’ with her photography, in unexpected and impressive compositions.“The National History Museum Vienna represents a diverse array of scientific fields, ranging from mineralogy, geology, paleontology, to botany, zoology, anthropology and human prehistory. And, what the public actually sees is only a fraction of the collections. An illustrative comparison is with that of an iceberg, of which only a fraction is visible above the waterline. In the Natural History Museum Vienna, just a few percent of the around 30 million objects in its collections are on display, and only about one fifth of its space is dedicated to public showrooms. Behind the scenes of such a large institution, the parts that the public is rarely privy to are vast storage facilities (extending to four level underground), preparation rooms, laboratories, offices, archives, etc. The photographs presented here cover the public areas as well as the (much larger) realm that is ‘behind the scenes’.”- Dona Jalufka