The careers of Rosalia Rothansl (1870–1945) and Mileva Stoisavljevic-Roller (1886–1949) are examples of both the professionalization of women artists in the context of the opening of what was then called the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts, as well as of the modernist orientation of its artistic pedagogy in the early 20th century.

As one of the first women in Central Europe ever to receive a professorship, Rothansl taught artists such as Friedl Dicker-Brandeis, Elisabeth Karlinsky, Vally Wieselthier, and Emmy Zweybrück in the field of textile techniques. Stoisavljevic was trained as a graphic designer and enamel artist at the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts and was active early on in the milieu of the Secession, including work for the journals Die Fläche (The Surface) and Ver Sacrum.

The exhibition contextualizes the work of these two protagonists for the first time on the basis of their textile collection, which have been preserved at the institute Collection and Archive of the University of Applied Arts Vienna in the form of two omnibus volumes. These feature multicolored, hand-crafted pieces of knit, embroidered, or lace clothing and fragments woven in regionally specific patterns, originating from anonymous creators of the rural regions of Bohemia, Moravia, Dalmatia, Galicia, Lodomeria, or Bukovina, but also South and East Asia.

The exhibition investigates the two volumes as reflections of an interest in so-called “Volkskunst” (folk art) that gained strength beginning in the second half of the 19th century and that was palpable both in the humanities disciplines that were then establishing themselves, as well as in the (applied) arts and contemporary museum practice. This interest connects the collections of the two artists with figures such as haute couturier Emilie Flöge, ethnologist Michael Haberlandt, or art historian Alois Riegl.

Textile Transfers approaches Rothansl’s and Stoisavljevic-Roller’s multifaceted use of textiles as artistic models and artifacts. On the one hand, the exhibition highlights Rothansl’s teaching and the relevance of her curatorial practice at the School of Arts and Crafts for the work of her students, with reference to individual careers. On the other hand, it tracks the photographic staging of clothing compiled by Stoisavljevic as examples of reform dress, placing it in the context of the artist’s interconnection with the Klimt group. Furthermore, the exhibition traces the roles the collection items play in the construction of national identity and in the transformation of gender relations in the context of the reform of arts and crafts around 1900. The eclectic composition of the textile collections raises questions as to the existence of a primitivism peculiar to the Wiener Moderne, in light of its appropriation of artistic knowledge practices from regions that therein appear as belonging to the “peripheries” of Austro-Hungary or the “Orient.”