Museum of Applied Arts
The MAK (Museum für angewandte Kunst) is Vienna's state museum of applied arts and design, founded in 1863. It serves cultural tourists, design enthusiasts, and scholars with permanent and temporary exhibitions, a world-class textile and Wiener Werkstätte collection, digital guides, retail, and venue rental.
- Company typePrivate
- Founded1863
- HeadquartersVienna, Austria
- Headcount51–100
- GTM typeB2C
- OfferingServices
What Museum of Applied Arts does
The Museum of Applied Arts (MAK – Museum für angewandte Kunst), founded in 1863 in Vienna as the Österreichisches Museum für Kunst und Industrie, is a state-backed nonprofit museum that preserves, studies, and presents applied arts, design, and contemporary art. It serves general museum visitors, cultural tourists, design enthusiasts, scholars, and Vienna's domestic audience, and it houses one of the world's most significant textile and carpet collections, the Wiener Werkstätte Archive, plus holdings in Asian art, glass, ceramics, and metalwork. Its curatorial team, led by General Director Lilli Hollein, runs a continuous program of temporary exhibitions (e.g., GLANZSTÜCKE with Van Cleef & Arpels, Felix Lenz, Thomas Demand, Christoph Schlingensief) alongside permanent-collection reinstallations such as WIEN 1900, running through 2030.
The museum's technical footprint is conventional for a cultural institution: a Pretix-based online ticketing system with GetYourGuide as a third-party reseller, a digital collection database at sammlung.mak.at, the MAK Guide mobile multimedia app, PostHog and Matomo for web analytics, and on-site infrastructure including the permanent MAKlite light installation by James Turrell. Distribution is anchored by the Neo-Renaissance building at Stubenring 5, 1010 Wien, supplemented by nine non-English tourism landing pages (FR, IT, ES, SK, CZ, HU, RU, CN, JP) targeting international visitors, and a content layer comprising the MAK Blog, MAK Podcast, and a YouTube channel.
MAK's revenue model is diversified across ticket sales, annual passes, the MAK Design Shop, venue rental, the on-site Salonplafond café/restaurant, multimedia guides, and sponsorship. Corporate supporters include Erste Bank, Wiener Städtische, Dorotheum, Rubelli, and Arbeiterkammer Wien, with the Austrian Federal Ministry providing public funding and commissioning. The institution operates as a nonprofit under Austrian public administration, and no private ownership, VC backing, or M&A activity is indicated in the available data.
Museum of Applied Arts firmographics
Firmographics- Name
- Museum of Applied Arts
- Legal name
- MAK - Museum für angewandte Kunst
- Website
- https://mak.at
- Company type
- Private
- Founded year
- 1863
- Operating status
- Operating
- Headcount range
- 51–100 employees
- Short description
- The MAK (Museum für angewandte Kunst) is Vienna's state museum of applied arts and design, founded in 1863. It serves cultural tourists, design enthusiasts, and scholars with permanent and temporary exhibitions, a world-class textile and Wiener Werkstätte collection, digital guides, retail, and venue rental.
- Ownership category
- akta.pro rank
Museum of Applied Arts industry classification
Industry- Product category
- Cultural Museum Services
- NAICS
- Museums, Historical Sites, and Similar Institutions (7121), Museums (71211), Museums (712110)
- akta.pro primary industry
- Art Museums (THAJADAA)
- akta.pro secondary industries
- Art Galleries & Exhibition Spaces (Commercial & Nonprofit) (THAJADAH), Performing Arts & Cultural Event Venues (Theaters, Museums) (THAHAAAG)
Keywords
Where Museum of Applied Arts is headquartered
LocationHeadquarters
- HQ city
- Vienna
- HQ country
- Austria
- HQ region
- Europe
Offices1 record
Markets served
Museum of Applied Arts business model
Business model- GTM type
- B2C
- Offering type
- Services
- Cost components
- Personnel, Operations, Marketing or Sales, Infrastructure, Supply Chain, Others
Revenue model
- Ticket Sales: Revenue from admission tickets sold to visitors for exhibitions and permanent collections. Ticket sales managed through pretix system and GetYourGuide marketplace.
- Annual Passes: Annual membership subscriptions providing unlimited access to the museum
- MAK Design Shop: Retail sales of museum merchandise, design objects, and publications through the MAK Design Shop (makdesignshop.at)
- Venue Rental: Rental of museum spaces for events, private functions, and commercial photography/filming
- Café and Restaurant: Salonplafond café and restaurant operating within the museum premises
- Sponsorship and Support: Financial support from corporate sponsors (Erste Bank, Wiener Städtische, Dorotheum, Rubelli, Arbeiterkammer Wien) and public funding from the Austrian Federal Ministry
- Multimedia Guides: Digital audio guides and multimedia tour content for visitors
Pricing tiers
| Model | Billing | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Unit Pricing | Pay-as-you-go | Standard admission with reduced rate for Wiener Festwochen ticket holders |
Go-to-market motion1 record
Distribution channels5 records
Marketing channels9 records
Museum of Applied Arts product offering
Product offeringCore offering
The Museum of Applied Arts (MAK) operates a museum in Vienna dedicated to applied arts, design, and contemporary art. It curates and presents permanent and temporary exhibitions drawn from its collections of textiles and carpets, Asian art, glass and ceramics, metalwork, and the Wiener Werkstätte archive. The museum complements exhibitions with educational programs, a multimedia guide app, a research library, an on-site café, a design retail shop, and venue rental for private events.
Product overview
The Museum of Applied Arts (MAK) is Vienna's premier museum for applied arts, design, and contemporary art. Its core offering centers on exhibitions—both temporary and permanent—of applied arts, design, historical collections, and contemporary works. The museum supplements its exhibition program with digital services including the MAK Guide (multimedia guide app), Online Collection database, blog, and podcast. Additional offerings include the MAK Design Shop (retail), Café Restaurant Salonplafond (hospitality), MAK Design Lab (exhibition space), library and reading room services, and educational programs. The digital infrastructure supports ticket purchasing through Pretix, analytics via PostHog and Matomo, and video content through YouTube embeds.
Differentiator
Problem solved
Functional benefit
Products and services
- Exhibitions Program Core museum offering comprising temporary and permanent exhibitions spanning applied arts, design, contemporary art, and historical collections such as textiles, carpets, Asian art, glass, ceramics, and metalwork. Open to general visitors during museum opening hours.
Companies that use Museum of Applied Arts
Customer profileSegments1 record
Ideal customer profiles2 records
Museum of Applied Arts technology and API
TechnologyTechnology focussed No
API detail
- Has API
- No
- API docs
- API detail
Core technology
AI maturity
App detail
Integration4 records
Feature3 records
Museum of Applied Arts partnerships and signals
Strategic signalPartnerships
Nine partnerships are on record, tiered core and minor.
- FormaFantasmacoreFormaFantasma, an internationally renowned design studio founded by Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin, was commissioned to design the new presentation of the MAK Collection Textiles and Carpets. They developed the exhibition concept and spatial design, contextualizing carpets with other textile highlights in the collection.
- RubelliminorRubelli provides friendly support for the presentation of the MAK Collection Textiles and Carpets exhibition.
- Wienbibliothek im RathauscoreCooperation partner for the HYPE UND HOCHKULTUR exhibition celebrating 75 years of Wiener Festwochen posters. The Wienbibliothek contributes their poster collection, and together they will digitize the entire Wiener Festwochen poster archive.
- Wiener FestwochencoreJoint project partner for the HYPE UND HOCHKULTUR exhibition. The Wiener Festwochen festival contributes over 1,000 posters from their archive for the exhibition celebrating 75 years of their campaigns.
- Gropius Bau / Berliner FestspielecoreJoint project partner with MAK and Wiener Festwochen for the Christoph Schlingensief exhibition 'Es ist nicht mehr mein Problem!' - the first comprehensive solo exhibition of the artist in Austria.
- DorotheumminorProvides friendly support for the VALLY WIESELTHIER: Bild und Ton exhibition.
- Erste BankminorMain sponsor of Wiener Festwochen festival.
- Wiener StädtischeminorMain sponsor of Wiener Festwochen festival.
- Arbeiterkammer WienminorSponsor of Wiener Festwochen festival.
Scale indicators3 records
Recent moves6 records
Expansion highlights6 records
Museum of Applied Arts competitors and assessment
Company assessmentRegional players
- Albertina: Vienna museum of graphic arts and modern art with significant print and poster holdings. Comparable as a Vienna cultural institution with overlapping poster/design collection interests (the Albertina also holds major poster collections) and similar federal funding model.
- Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien: Vienna's premier fine arts museum. Comparable as a neighboring state museum sharing Vienna's cultural district audience, tourist pass inventory, and Austrian federal funding ecosystem, though distinct in collection scope.
- Belvedere: Vienna's main art museum (Gustav Klimt collection). Comparable as a Vienna-based state museum competing for the same tourist footfall and public funding pools, though focused on fine rather than applied arts.
Broad incumbents
- MoMA (Museum of Modern Art): Larger global incumbent in the museum space with a design and architecture department. Comparable as a broader-scoped museum whose design programming (MoMA Design Store, exhibitions) overlaps with MAK's contemporary design positioning and Design Shop retail model.
Direct peers
- Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum: Smithsonian-affiliated design museum in New York. Directly comparable to MAK as a design-focused museum with historical and contemporary collections, digital collection access initiatives, and a strong educational programming mandate.
- Musée des Arts Décoratifs (MAD Paris): Paris museum of decorative arts housed in the Louvre palace. Directly comparable to MAK as a French counterpart focused on applied/decorative arts, design, and contemporary creation, with strong fashion and textile holdings and luxury-brand exhibition partnerships.
- Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A): The world's leading museum of art and design, founded 1852 in London. Directly comparable to MAK as a national museum of applied arts and design with similar curatorial scope (textiles, furniture, decorative arts) and a hybrid public funding / commercial revenue model.
- Design Museum (London): London's leading contemporary design museum. Comparable to MAK's design-focused programming wing (MAK Design Lab) and overlapping audience of design professionals, students, and tourists.
- Museum of Applied Arts (Iparművészeti Múzeum), Budapest: Budapest's applied arts museum with a notable collection of Hungarian and European decorative arts and a historic Secessionist building. Directly comparable to MAK as a Central European applied arts counterpart with similar collection history and exhibition scope.
- Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg: One of Europe's most important museums of applied arts, founded 1874. Directly comparable to MAK in mission (applied arts and design), collection scope (post-antique European and Asian decorative arts), and German-speaking European institutional positioning.
Market position
Strengths5 records
Weaknesses5 records
Competitive moat4 records
Key risks6 records
Key highlights7 records
Customer concentration
Museum of Applied Arts social profiles
Digital presenceMuseum of Applied Arts financial estimates
Financial estimateRevenue estimate
Valuation estimate
Museum of Applied Arts leadership team
Management profileNumber of profiles
Profiles5 records
Museum of Applied Arts funding detail
Funding detailFunding overview
Funding rounds
Investors
Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Museum of Applied Arts M&A and investment
M&A and investmentM&A
Investments
M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Frequently asked questions about Museum of Applied Arts
What does Museum of Applied Arts do?
The Museum of Applied Arts (MAK) operates a museum in Vienna dedicated to applied arts, design, and contemporary art. It curates and presents permanent and temporary exhibitions drawn from its collections of textiles and carpets, Asian art, glass and ceramics, metalwork, and the Wiener Werkstätte archive. The museum complements exhibitions with educational programs, a multimedia guide app, a research library, an on-site café, a design retail shop, and venue rental for private events.
Is Museum of Applied Arts a public or private company?
Museum of Applied Arts is a private company. It is classified as state government owned and is currently operating.
When was Museum of Applied Arts founded?
Museum of Applied Arts was founded in 1863. It employs 51 to 100 people.
Where is Museum of Applied Arts based?
Museum of Applied Arts is headquartered in Vienna, Austria, in the Europe region.
How does Museum of Applied Arts make money?
Seven revenue lines are on record. Ticket Sales are the primary driver. The others are annual Passes, MAK Design Shop, venue Rental, café and Restaurant, sponsorship and Support and multimedia Guides.
Who are Museum of Applied Arts's main competitors?
Regional players on record are Albertina, Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien and Belvedere. MoMA (Museum of Modern Art) is listed as a broad incumbent. Direct peers are Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, Musée des Arts Décoratifs (MAD Paris), Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), Design Museum (London), Museum of Applied Arts (Iparművészeti Múzeum), Budapest and Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg.
Does Museum of Applied Arts have an API?
No public API is recorded for Museum of Applied Arts.
What industry is Museum of Applied Arts in?
Museum of Applied Arts's product category is Cultural Museum Services. Its primary akta.pro industry code is THAJADAA, Art Museums, with a secondary code of THAJADAH, Art Galleries & Exhibition Spaces (Commercial & Nonprofit). Its NAICS code is 7121.