Kunsthistorisches Museum
The great art museum on the Ringstrasse in Vienna, Austria. See Vienna (Literary).
At a glance
| Source | Author | Role | In one line |
|---|---|---|---|
| Neither Here Nor There | Bill Bryson | setting | A fabulous museum so big it gives Bryson museum fatigue a third of the way through. |
Neither Here Nor There — Bill Bryson (1991)
Source: Readwise highlight
I decided to start at the top with the Kunsthistorische Museum. It was fabulous—vast, grand, full of great paintings.
- Role: setting
- In the book: Chapter 19. He praises the racks of cards in each room giving the paintings’ histories in four languages. But the halls “just run on and on”, and before a third of the way through he has museum fatigue and starts “involuntarily supplying captions to the pictures”.
- Why it matters: It is the first of the Vienna chapter’s museum set-pieces, mostly comic. It establishes the city’s grandeur before the run of let-downs (the Albertina, the cafés, the Freud museum).