--- type: magazine_content title: “A General Director Is Just One Cog in the Machine” language: en url: "https://www.belvedere.at/en/stories/stella-rollig-interview" --- # “A General Director Is Just One Cog in the Machine” ![Image](https://www.belvedere.at/sites/default/files/styles/full_width/public/2026-10/Portr%C3%A4t_Stella%20Rollig_OB%20Marmorsaal_queer9363_Gianmaria%20Gava.jpg.webp?itok=dLV3-b-P) Stella Rollig, in conversation with Nina Schedlmayer **Category:** Perspectives [Behind the Scenes](javascript:void(0);) [Interview](javascript:void(0);) **Published:** 04.11.2026 **Reading time:** 7 min read When Stella Rollig assumed her post as general and artistic director of the Belvedere in 2017, there was no doubt that she would rethink and reshape quite a few things. With her innovative approaches to the collection, a fresh perspective on art history, and a keen awareness of diversity, she has continued to steer this supertanker through turbulent and conflict-ridden times. Belvedere Stories spoke with Rollig about new insights, a decade of museum leadership, and the one gift she would pass on to her successor – for in mid-January 2027, she will be stepping down. **Interview:** Stella Rollig Nina Schedlmayer Translation: Suzanne Ryan Enser **Photos:** © Belvedere, Wien **Header-Image:** © Gianmaria Gava / Belvedere, Wien **Belvedere Stories: You’ve been at the helm of the Belvedere for nearly ten years. By now, you must know the museum and its staff inside and out. What has surprised you most recently?** **Stella Rollig:** It may sound strange, but I was surprised by how much work goes into putting together an exhibition. Aside from my *Carlone Contemporary* series, I’ve barely done any curating for the past ten years. But this spring, I co-curated the *Stellprobe* exhibition at the Belvedere 21 with Luisa Ziaja – and let me tell you, it was a lot of work! All the details curators have to handle beyond developing the exhibition concept and choosing the works: writing and editing countless texts, finalizing installation details, talking to security staff and art handlers, and a thousand other things. I was no longer used to doing all that on a daily basis. At the same time, I was dying to get back into it. **Has the role of the curator changed over the past ten years?** The demands and conditions under which exhibitions are produced have changed considerably. Legal issues and security concerns have become more relevant, as has bureaucracy in general. **And what about museum work overall?** It has changed enormously. The costs of transportation and security are much higher than they used to be. What’s less widely known is that a constant stream of new legal regulations – from copyright and usage rights to tendering procedures for commissions – requires costly legal counsel. Moreover, working in a museum today requires an awareness of diversity and inclusion that played a much smaller role at the beginning of my career. I have been active in the art world for forty years now. The fact that these issues have gained importance is a very significant social development. But it has also created a new area of activity that did not exist in this form before. Societal negotiations and political conflicts are being waged more relentlessly. The war in Gaza, for instance, which broke out following Hamas’s attack on Israel, is also affecting museums. As a result, many have become less political out of fear of doing something wrong. ![Luisa Ziaja, Stella Rollig, and Heimo Zobernig stand together in the exhibition Stellprobe. Their reflections appear on a glossy red wall to the right. — Luisa Ziaja, Stella Rollig, and Heimo Zobernig (from left to right) in the exhibition Stellprobe. — © eSeL.at / Lorenz Seidler](https://www.belvedere.at/sites/default/files/styles/full_content_width_no_crop/public/2026-11/eSeLat_Belvedere21_Stellprobe_2287.jpg.webp?itok=4BABIUU-) **Similar debates have also taken place at the Belvedere. There have been cancellations and open letters.** Others develop their programming in ways that avoid the risk of such controversy altogether. But we are, after all, a museum that is attuned to contemporary and sociopolitical issues, and this means taking political risks. If a conflict arises as a result, you have to deal with it as best as you can – even when it places a considerable strain on the institution. ![Stella Rollig gestures while guiding Austrian Federal President Alexander Van der Bellen and Doris Schmidauer through the permanent collection at the Upper Belvedere. — Stella Rollig with Austrian Federal President Alexander Van der Bellen and Doris Schmidauer at the Upper Belvedere, 2018. — © Sandro Zanzinger / Belvedere, Wien](https://www.belvedere.at/sites/default/files/styles/full_content_width_no_crop/public/2026-10/_93A8058belvedere_schausammlung_Sandro%20E%20E%20Zanzinger.jpg.webp?itok=KTDoVxHL) **It was your objective from the very beginning to position the Belvedere as an influential force within the professional community. Which exhibitions were particularly important in achieving that?** In my view, museums need to break new ground by presenting art that hasn’t already been examined and explored from every conceivable angle. When I started at the Belvedere, an exhibition commemorating the 2018 Klimt anniversary was being planned. It was supposed to have something to do with gold. However, I felt that we needed to honor this anniversary in a way that went beyond perpetuating old clichés. When you take on a leadership role at such an important institution, you’re under pressure, but you’re also full of ideas and visions. Ultimately, thanks to a fruitful exchange with curator Alexander Klee, we realized the exhibition *Beyond Klimt*, which explored the continued vitality of Klimt’s legacy within trans-European networks, featuring a number of Eastern European artists. The response in Vienna was muted. Some reviews even complained that many of the artists were little known, and I thought, “Exactly! That’s the whole point!” When the exhibition subsequently traveled to Bozar in Brussels, however, its fresh perspective on Klimt was warmly received. Among the major exhibitions, I consider *In the Eye of the Storm: Modernisms in Ukraine* (2024) an important political statement. And *City of Women* (2019), curated by Sabine Fellner, will undoubtedly remain in people’s memories. It became a benchmark exhibition. **What key insights have you gained during your time at the Belvedere into how a museum supertanker like this one operates?** Even when I was director of the Lentos Art Museum in Linz, I learned that a general director is just one cog in the machine. She may be steering the ship, but every institution has a stubborn life of its own. Changing its overall course takes a lot of time and sustained energy. At the same time, you have to recognize – and this is painful – that not everyone will love you, either within the institution or among the public. For example, there’s no organization where everyone is satisfied with how communication is handled, and the office grapevine is impossible to counter. When you’re in the public eye, people will judge you, and that’s something you have to live with, too. Another thing I came to realize: Austria is insignificant. Even its major institutions are barely mentioned in the international media. **And yet, Florentina Holzinger, in particular, has made a splash on the international scene, and last year ARTnews named Vienna “Europe’s best art city.”** I agree when it comes to Holzinger. But the claim that Vienna is the most important city for art – that headline comes around every eight to ten years. In 1987, the dome of the Secession appeared on the cover of Kunstforum International, and even then, Vienna was hailed as incredibly important. And then, before you know it, a few art fairs end up closing down. **The Belvedere has undoubtedly long been one of Austria’s international cultural flagships, with Klimt’s** ***The Kiss*** **as its most recognizable icon. How has your view of this work changed?** As a student, I certainly didn't have a poster of it hanging on my wall. But working here, I’ve seen how deeply the painting moves and captivates people – more than I ever would have imagined. When Egyptian friends of my family were planning a trip to Vienna, their 16-year-old daughter texted my sister beforehand to say that she absolutely had to see *The Kiss –* without realizing that I was the director of the Belvedere. So I ended up giving her a personal tour. **Other than** ***The Kiss*****, which virtually every visitor wants to see anyway, is there a particular work you’d make a point of showing everyone?** It’s more about certain galleries and juxtapositions: Broncia Koller-Pinell next to Edvard Munch, for one. Or moving from the splendor of the Klimts on the first floor to the second, where you’re confronted with themes of exile and displacement through works such as Anton Hanak’s The Last Human and Schiele’s Death and the Maiden. And the Znojmo Altarpiece is always a showstopper! It has so much to tell, and the craftsmanship is incredible. **The Belvedere covers eight hundred years of art history. Before coming here, you worked mainly with contemporary and modern art. How has your relationship with earlier periods of art history evolved?** I grew up surrounded by historical art; when I was a child, my parents took me to the Kunsthistorisches Museum. And I find that the older I get, the more historical art means to me. I’ve noticed that, at the moment, it enriches me emotionally more than contemporary art does – not all periods equally, of course. I love our medieval collection, which our curator Björn Blauensteiner has beautifully installed. I’m also very interested in the nineteenth century. **In the final year of your tenure as director, one focus is on the work of women artists, including an intriguing project that takes the legendary 1985 exhibition** ***Art with a Mind of Its Own*** **as its starting point. Which women artists particularly excited you at the time?** At the time, I hadn’t translated my feminist awareness into my professional practice, which I can't really explain. This changed in the early 1990s when I founded Depot, a space for discussion and theoretical discourse. It was only then that I became aware of the structural disadvantages that women artists face. From that point on, however, the issue became really important to me. Right from the start at Lentos, I made the work of women artists a particular focus. This doesn't necessarily mean feminist art. At the Belvedere, I was able to show great artists like Louise Bourgeois and Kiki Smith. Isa Genzken, Friedl Kubelka vom Gröller, and Mary Heilmann have been important to me for many years. ![Stella Rollig smiles and gestures during the presentation of the exhibition City of Women at the Belvedere. The exhibition catalogue is displayed beside her. — Stella Rollig at the exhibition opening of City of Women, 2019. — © Franzi Kreis / Belvedere, Wien](https://www.belvedere.at/sites/default/files/styles/full_content_width_no_crop/public/2026-10/024_Stadt%20der%20Frauen.jpg.webp?itok=mFVT4EJD) **What symbolic gift would you give your successor, Nina Zimmer, when handing over the museum?** A pair of binoculars to keep an eye on developments and events further afield *–* because in an institution of this size, there’s a danger of being sucked in and losing sight of what’s going on outside. But you can also turn the binoculars around: if you imagine looking at a difficult situation through them that way, suddenly you see nothing but little people arguing about something or other. That really takes the pressure off.