iJewish Museum Vienna (Jüdisches Museum Wien)Innere Stadt
On the Jewish Wig
This exhibition has ended.
In the Dorotheergasse project space: Anja Salomonowitz's film on the sheitel, with a Viennese wigmaker and Orthodox women on why and how they cover their hair.
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"I wear my wig for myself. My husband doesn't care. As far as he's concerned, I could go about in a bikini." That's one of the women in Anja Salomonowitz's film, and it sets the tone: Orthodox Jewish women in Vienna explaining, in their own words, why they cover their hair after marriage.
You walk round a designed screen that splits the Project Space and sit down behind it to watch. Salomonowitz talks to a Viennese wigmaker and to wig wearers including Jael Loutati, Michelle Plishtiev, Anat and Judit Sadikov and Daniela Yampolsky about the sheitel (a wig) and the tichel (a headscarf). The museum's point is that a good sheitel often can't be told from natural hair, which is where the curiosity and the misunderstandings start.
It is one film in one room, so it fits around a visit to the main collection at Dorotheergasse. It's covered by the €15 museum ticket, free under 19, and closes on Monday 12 October.
Look for
The screen and the seats behind it
A designed screen divides the Project Space, with a small, intimate seating area behind it where you watch the film.
The wigmaker
A Viennese wigmaker answers the basic questions an outsider would ask about the sheitel.
The bikini line
One woman says she wears her wig for herself, and that her husband wouldn't mind if she went out in a bikini.
Good for
- An Hour Or Less
- Going Solo
- Locals Who've Seen It All
Skip if
You don't want to sit through a film: the whole show is one screening.
Also at Jewish Museum Vienna (Jüdisches Museum Wien)
On now nearby
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iThe Special Exhibit: Erich Lessing: A Moment of Hope
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iBridge of Humanity. Austria and the 1956 Hungarian Uprising
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Nearby
Image credits
7
- Jewish Museum Vienna (Jüdisches Museum Wien)Sonja Bachmayer / Jewish Museum Vienna, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- The Global Power of Love. A Journey Through the CenturiesÖsterreichische Nationalbibliothek
- The Special Exhibit: Erich Lessing: A Moment of HopeCourtesy of State Hall of the Austrian National Library (Prunksaal)
- Bridge of Humanity. Austria and the 1956 Hungarian UprisingÖsterreichische Nationalbibliothek
- Theatermuseum (Palais Lobkowitz)Gryffindor / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.5
- State Hall of the Austrian National Library (Prunksaal)Mirej / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 AT
- AlbertinaC.Stadler/Bwag, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0