Scientific Staff
Do you have questions about specific projects or have an inquiry regarding scientific research? Here you will find information including contact details.
Directors
Photo: Ouriel Morgensztern / Belvedere, Vienna
Luisa Ziaja
Director of Curatorial Department and Chief Curator
Luisa Ziaja is an art historian and has been chief curator of the Belvedere since 2022, where she has been responsible for numerous exhibitions and publications as curator of contemporary art since 2013. She has been co-director of the postgraduate study program in exhibition theory and practice (educating/curating/ managing) at the University of Applied Arts Vienna since 2006 and author and co-editor of the publication series curating. In her curatorial and discursive work, she deals with, among other topics, the relationship between visual art, society, and the politics of history as well as with the history and theory of museums and exhibiting.
Photo: Johannes Stoll / Belvedere, Vienna
Christian Huemer
Director Research Center
Christian Huemer has been director of the Belvedere Research Centre since 2017. He studied art history in Vienna, Paris, and New York. From 2008 to 2017, he directed the department of Collecting & Provenance at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. His research focuses on the history of the international art market, French and Austrian Modernism, and digital art history. Visiting professor at Sotheby's Institute of Art in Los Angeles, Hunter College in New York, Erasmus University Rotterdam, and the University of Vienna, among others. He is editor in chief of the Belvedere Research Journal and the Brill book series Studies in the History of Collecting & Art Markets.
Curators
Foto: Johannes Stoll / Belvedere, Wien
Stephanie Auer
Curator - Collection 19th & 20th Century
Stephanie Auer studied art history and Romance studies in Innsbruck and Granada. Since 2023, she has been curator for the collections of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century art at the Belvedere. Prior to that, in her role as assistant curator, she contributed to exhibitions including Beyond Klimt: New Horizons in Central Europe (2018), Dalí—Freud: An Obsession (2022), and Klimt: Inspired by Van Gogh, Matisse, Rodin… (2023). Her research focuses on Viennese Modernism, artist networks, and transnational exchange processes.
Photo: Johannes Stoll / Belvedere, Vienna
Björn Blauensteiner
Curator - Collection Middle Ages & Renaissance
Björn Blauensteiner studied law and art history in Vienna, Utrecht, Berlin, and Frankfurt. From 2010 to 2015 he was research assistant and curator at the Picture Gallery of the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna; since 2016, he has been in charge of the Middle Ages and Renaissance collection at the Belvedere, where he curated the exhibitions Rueland Frueauf the Elder and his Circle (2017) and The Age of Dürer. Austria at the Gate of the Renaissance (2021). His research focuses on northern art in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
Photo: Johannes Stoll / Belvedere, Vienna
Christiane Erharter
Curator - Community Outreach
Christiane Erharter has been the curator of Community Outreach and the Public Program at the Belvedere since 2018. Her research interests include queer art practices, feminist art history, participatory and community-based artistic practices, and diversity and inclusion. She studied painting and graphic arts under Gunter Damisch (Academy of Fine Arts Vienna) and postgraduate critical studies (Malmö Art Academy). She previously worked as a curator for the ERSTE Foundation in Vienna (2006–17), at the Office for Contemporary Art Norway in Oslo (2002–06), and as deputy director of the Galerie im Taxispalais in Innsbruck (2000–02).
Photo: Johannes Stoll / Belvedere, Vienna
Markus Fellinger
Curator - Collection 19th & 20th Century
Markus Fellinger has worked at the Belvedere since 2011 and has been curator of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century collection since 2016. He has curated exhibitions, among others, on Franz Barwig the Elder, Max Kurzweil, and Tina Blau, for whom he manages the online catalogue raisonné of paintings together with Claus Jesina. One focus of his research is Gustav Klimt, for whom he has curated several exhibitions. He is also interested in transcultural and image-critical themes.
Photo: Johannes Stoll / Belvedere, Vienna
Verena Gamper
Curator - Collection 20th Century
Verena Gamper is an art historian with a research focus on the theory and critique of Modernism, intermediality and interdisciplinarity, exhibition and reception history, and forms of appropriation and authorship. She has been curator of the twentieth-century collection at the Belvedere since 2023. Previously, she was curator at the Kunsthalle Krems from 2014 to 2017 (Abstract – Spatial. Painting in Space; Remastered: The Art of Appropriation) and at the Leopold Museum from 2018 to 2022 (The Body Electric. Erwin Osen – Egon Schiele; Ludwig Wittgenstein. Photography as Analytical Practice).
Photo: Johannes Stoll / Belvedere, Vienna
Arnika Groenewald-Schmidt
Curator - Collection 19th Century
Arnika Groenewald-Schmidt has served as curator of the Belvedere's 19th-century collection since 2024. She began her tenure as assistant curator in 2015. She previously worked at the National Gallery in London. She earned her Ph.D. with a dissertation titled Nino Costa (1826–1903). Transnational Exchange in European Landscape Painting at the TU Dresden. Her research focuses on the rich history of nineteenth-century art, the evolution of landscape painting, and the significance of intercultural relationships between artists.
Photo: Johannes Stoll / Belvedere, Vienna
Sergey Harutoonian
Curator - Contemporary Art
Sergey Harutoonian is an art historian with a focus on twentieth twenty-first-century art. Since June 2022, he has been curator for contemporary art at the Belvedere, where he engages with forms of digital change, questions of identity, and contemporary culture. From 2018 to 2022, he curated the exhibition program of the Kunstverein Hannover, serving as interim director in 2022. Prior roles include positions at the MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst, Städel Museum, Deutsche Bank Collection, and Deutsche Börse Art Collection.
Photo: Johannes Stoll / Belvedere, Vienna
Alexander Klee
Curator - Collection 19th & 20th Century
Alexander Klee is curator for the second half of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century at the Belvedere. A founding member of the Adolf Hölzel Foundation in Stuttgart, he is compiling the catalogue raisonné of Adolf Hölzel’s works. Numerous monographic publications and exhibitions on Hölzel, Georg Karl Pfahler, Emil Jakob Schindler, Hans Makart, Franz von Stuck, Elena Luksch-Makowsky, Lovis Corinth, and Max Oppenheimer, as well as thematic exhibitions such as Vienna—Berlin: The Art of Two Cities (2014) and Beyond Klimt: New Horizons in Central Europe in Vienna and Brussels (2018–19).
Foto: Johannes Stoll / Belvedere, Wien
Axel Köhne
Curator - Collection 20th Century
Axel Köhne has been curator for twentieth- and twenty-first-century art at the Belvedere since 2012, curating, among others, the exhibitions Daniel Richter. Lonely Old Slogans; Alexander Kluge. Pluriversum; Monica Bonvicini. I cannot hide my anger; Ugo Rondinone. nude in the landscape; Rebecca Warren. The Now Voyager; and Gerwald Rockenschaub. circuit cruise /feasible memory/regulator. Previously, he worked at the MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt am Main from 2010 to 2012, where he was the curator for the exhibition Manitoba by Tobias Zielony.
Photo: Johannes Stoll / Belvedere, Vienna
Georg Lechner
Curator - Collection Baroque
Georg Lechner studied art history at the University of Vienna. Since 2009 he has worked in the Belvedere’s Baroque collection. His research and publications focus on Austrian Baroque painting in general as well as portrait art and the history of the Belvedere and its collections. He recently curated the following exhibi¬tions at the Belvedere: Martin van Meytens the Younger (2014–15), Maria Theresa and the Arts (2017), Kremser Schmidt: On His 300th Birthday (2018), and Johann Jakob Hartmann (2021).
Photo: Johannes Stoll / Belvedere, Vienna
Katharina Lovecky
Curator - Collection 19th Century
Katharina Lovecky studied art history at the University of Vienna. She has been the curator in charge of the Belvedere's collection of the first half of the nineteenth century since 2024. She previously worked at the Belvedere as an assistant curator for 19th and 20th century art and was involved in exhibitions such as Makart – Painter of the Senses (2011), Emil Nolde. In Radiance and Color (2013), Europe in Vienna. The Congress of Vienna 1814/15 (2015), City of Women. Female Artists in Vienna from 1900 to 1938 (2019), and Into the Night. Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art (2020). She curated the exhibition Broncia Koller-Pinell. An Artist and Her Network (2024) with Alexander Klee. Her research focuses on the broad history of 19th-century art, with an emphasis on cultural-historical connections.
Photo: Johannes Stoll / Belvedere, Vienna
Stefanie Reisinger
Curator – Blicke Kino and Contemporary Art
Stefanie Reisinger is an art historian and, since 2023, curator of contemporary art and the Blickle Cinema at the Belvedere. Previously, she led the research and exhibition project Gego: The Architecture of an Artist at the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart and the University of Stuttgart (2019–22). She is a co-founder of Where Are My Keys and Phileas (2014–20) in Vienna. She has also worked for institutions such as the Austrian Pavilion and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, and the weisse haus in Vienna.
Photo: Johannes Stoll / Belvedere, Vienna
Franz Smola
Curator - Collection 19th & 20th Century
Franz Smola has been curator of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century art at the Belvedere since 2017. From 2009 to 2017 he worked as a collection curator at the Leopold Museum, and from 2013 to 2015 held the position of interim museological director there. He regularly curates exhibitions focusing on international classical Modernism and Vienna around 1900. Recent projects include Klimt. La Secessione e l'Italia at the Museo di Roma, Rome (2021–22), and Viva Venezia! The Invention of Venice in the 19th Century, Belvedere, Vienna (2022).
Photo: Johannes Stoll / Belvedere, Vienna
Gabriele Stöger-Spevak
Curator - Fritz Wotruba Estate
Gabriele Stöger-Spevak is a historian and art historian and has been curator of Fritz Wotruba's estate at the Belvedere in Vienna since 2018. Previously, she was curator at the Museum of Austrian Culture in Eisenstadt from 1994 to 1995, exhibition curator at the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna from 1995 to 2008, and curator of the Fritz Wotruba Private Foundation from 1995 to 2021. In addition to the work of Fritz Wotruba, her research focuses on Austrian sculpture and the cultural history of the twentieth century.
Research Center
Photo: Johannes Stoll / Belvedere, Vienna
Johanna Aufreiter
Scientific Project Coordination
Johanna Aufreiter has been a research associate at the Belvedere since 2018. She is member of the conference committee of The Art Museum in the Digital Age and co-editor of the Belvedere Research Journal. She studied Art History and German Philology at KFU Graz. She was a university assistant in Graz and Vienna and headed the Laboratory for Cognitive Research in Art History at Vienna University from 2013-2017. Her research focuses on optical theories in the Middle Ages, empirical reception research and digital art history.
Photo: Johannes Stoll / Belvedere, Vienna
Katinka Gratzer-Baumgärtner
Archive & Provenance Research
Katinka Gratzer-Baumgärtner has been an archivist and provenance researcher at the Belvedere since 2007. She specializes in researching the collection inventory, cataloguing archive holdings, and research for exhibition and research projects. She studied restoration and art history in Florence and Vienna, and worked at the Galerie am Stubentor (1994–2003) as assistant to management and at the Albertina (2004–06), where she promoted the digitization of the collection.
Photo: Johannes Stoll / Belvedere, Vienna
Maximilian Kaiser
Administration Collection Database (TMS)
Maximilian Kaiser has been administrator of the Belvedere’s collection database since 2022. He started at the Belvedere as a research assistant on the Hagenbund project (2013–15). He continued his work at the Austrian Academy of Sciences as a research associate of APIS (2015–19), and then as co-project manager of VieCPro (2020–22). As an art historian, he specializes in nineteenth- and twentieth-century art and international artist networks using digital methods.
Photo: Johannes Stoll / Belvedere, Vienna
Stefan Lehner
Archive
Stefan Lehner has been working in the archive of the Belvedere since 2007. His responsibilities include answering scholarly inquiries, cataloguing estates, and working on exhibitions. He studied history in Salzburg and graduated from the course for artistic photography at the Friedl Kubelka School. After completing his studies, he familiarized himself with the Belvedere from the ground up by working as a museum guard (2005–07).
Photo: Johannes Stoll / Belvedere, Vienna
Monika Mayer
Head of Archive & Provenance Research
Monika Mayer started at the Austrian Gallery Belvedere as a research assistant in 1992. Since 1998 she has been head of the archive and provenance research as well as a member of the Commission for Provenance Research. She studied history, art history, and ethnology at the Universities of Vienna and Innsbruck, supplemented by various research stays abroad. Besides curatorial work, she has worked as well on numerous publications and lectures on museum history, provenance research, and art policy under Austrofascism and National Socialism.