Albertina museum's anniversary

Vienna’s Albertina museum will celebrate the 10th anniversary of its re-opening with a series of special events in 2013. In March there will be an exhibition of Dutch prints from the museum’s own collection which includes works by Hieronymous Bosch, Rubens, Rembrandt and Pieter Bruegal the Elder. There will also be a summer festival and another exhibition in autumn 2013 of Matisse and the Fauves.

The Albertina, which is one of the world’s great collections of graphic art, holds a million prints and 60,000 sketches. One of its most well-known masterpieces is Durer’s Praying Hands. However it also has a permanent loan collection of important Impressionist and early 20th-century works.

The collection was started at the end of the 18th century by Duke Albert of Saxe-Teschen and the Genoese count, Giacomo Durazzo, who as director of the theatres in Vienna had a profound influence on cultural life in the capital.

The building, which is located in Vienna’s Innere Stadt in a section of the old city ramparts, was badly damaged by Allied bombing in world war two and had to be rebuilt. Between 1998 and 2003 it was remodernised and refurbished under the direction of the Austrian architect Hans Hollein, who added the distinctive cantilevered roof over the new access.