Exhibition Opening Event: Anaïs Horn | High Expectations

Image: Anaïs Horn, After the Interior, 2026, gouache and varnish on inkjet print on Hahnemuehle Rice Paper, from an archival photograph by Robert Haas (Wien Museum), 40×40cm

April 16, 2026 | 6 PM

TICKETS AVAILABLE HERE

Join us for the opening of High Expectations, a site-specific, multimedia installation by Austrian artist Anaïs Horn, presented in the Frederic Morton Library at the Austrian Cultural Forum New York. Marking Horn’s first institutional solo exhibition in the United States, High Expectations transforms the library into an immersive, multisensory environment. Bringing together historical design, feminist literature of the interwar period, contemporary writing, sound, and photography, the installation invites visitors to experience history as a tactile and living presence.

At the core of the exhibition is the rare textile Kokain (1931) by designer Erika von Trauschenfels, reimagined by Horn as a large padded floor piece that reshapes the space into an intimate, sensorial setting. A layered sound installation—featuring texts by Austrian women writers such as Vicki Baum, Mela Hartwig, and Alice Schalek alongside newly commissioned contemporary responses—creates a polyphonic dialogue across generations, exploring themes of autonomy, resilience, and visibility. Complementary bodies of work further expand the exhibition’s exploration of memory and erasure: The Call of the Void reflects on objects as emotional vessels, while After the Interior revisits archival photographs of Viennese Jewish homes before 1938–39, transforming them into quiet meditations on loss, knowledge, and persistence.

Through the intersection of design, literature, sound, and image, High Expectations foregrounds overlooked female voices while opening a space for contemporary feminist discourse and collective listening.

Please find more information about the exhibition here.

EVENING PROGRAM

6 PM | Doors open
6.30 PM | opening remarks
Followed by a reception