This is a book about the intersection of government policy and cultural production in late Hapsburg Austria. Staatskunst oder Kulturstaat proceeds from the broad thesis that a shift occurred during the second half of the nineteenth century in the societal position and uses of the arts in the Donaumonarchie. Whereas previously, the argument goes, art had been confined to serving as “royal (and to some extent upper middle-class) self-representation” (11), beginning around 1848 various forms of cultural production, from painting to opera to archaeological excavation, became matters of wide-ranging state activity and aspiration. The arts came to be “understood as a central pillar of state power” (11), a source of both outward prestige on the international stage and civic engagement at home that might contribute to a more cohesive and loyal citizenry. Crucially, there was money behind this new understanding of the arts: the book cites a roughly sixfold increase in state funding between 1885 and 1907, leading to the establishment or reform of a wide array of cultural institutions. The book judges the increased attention to have been successful in terms of both quantity and quality, triggering an “explosive” rise in artistic activity (10) and encouraging variety and innovation. Rather than seeking to confine artists to a narrowly defined, official Staatskunst, the government instead encouraged a diverse Kulturstaat encompassing a multiplicity of contributions. The book suggests that one positive outcome of this nonprescriptive approach was the rise of the Wiener Moderne.

The cultural activity supported by the Austrian government during this period is impressive for its variety. Under the direction of the Ministerium für Cultus und Unterricht, state funding led to the founding, expansion, and improvement of museums, galleries, schools, theaters, concert halls, and advocacy groups. It sponsored artist commissions, travel stipends, competitions, and prizes and enabled exhibitions and festivals. Major institutions including the Akademie der bildenden Künste, the Österreichisches Museum für Kunst und Industrie and its associated Kunstgewerbeschule, the Central-Commission zur Erforschung und Erhaltung der Baudenkmale, and the Musikverein thrived under government sponsorship. Memorials were built, historic structures preserved, and ancient sites unearthed. Much of this activity took place in or emanated from Vienna, but the book pays attention as well to “regionale Kunstpolitik,” with a section devoted to Prague and scattered treatment given as well to Landesmuseen and regional theaters in Tirol, Steiermark, and Niederösterreich. Another section documents the reform of art academies in Milan and Venice—an Italian excursus that reflects that the book was published under the auspices of the Österreichisches Historisches Institut in Rome, of which the author serves as director.

To document all this activity, the author relies heavily on unpublished government records. Indeed, the book is distinguished by a devotion to archival sources, which include the transcripts of lectures delivered at the Unterrichtsministerium and accounts of institutional budgets and visitor numbers. These are valuable sources, and the labor involved in excavating them is impressive. However, at times this reliance becomes a limitation. Take, for example, the case of Vienna's Museum für Kunst und Industrie, one of the institutions examined most extensively in the book (and an example better known to this reviewer). The author has assembled previously untapped official documents to demonstrate the activities of the museum. Despite their originality, however, these sources do not appear to shed much new light on what is already well understood about the museum's goals, such as advancing industrial productivity through reform of local Kunstgewerbe, reaching a diverse audience of manufacturers, artists, artisans, and consumers, and intervening in imperial politics by promoting cultural unity among diverse regions and their decorative traditions. Much more insight on these issues could have been gleaned from the museum's in-house journal, mentioned in the book but not explored, as well as the many published writings of its intellectual leaders such as Rudolf Eitelberger and Alois Riegl. Both Eitelberger and Riegl feature prominently in the book's narrative, yet the author notably chooses not to work directly with their published writings. Helpful, too, would have been greater attention to recent secondary literature such as Matthew Rampley's The Vienna School of Art History: Empire and the Politics of Scholarship (University Park, 2013) and Diana Reynolds Cordileone's Alois Riegl in Vienna, 1875–1905: An Institutional Biography (New York, 2014). Both books combine archival research with extensive analysis of period publications and provide outstanding evaluation of the Österreichisches Museum in its political and cultural contexts.

The same limitations also characterize the book's overall conclusions. Staatskunst oder Kulturstaat ends by enumerating what the era's arts policy demonstrates about the Selbstverständnis of the Austrian state, including a belief in the value of the arts as a pillar of modern, liberal society; a belief in the potential of the arts to support economic productivity through cultural exports; a belief in strong central authority as expressed in top-down cultural infrastructure led by national institutions based in Vienna; and a belief that the empire's internal bonds could be shored up by fostering supranational identity based on the idea of unity in diversity. These are valuable observations and are supported by the documentation that the book provides. But they also echo general conclusions that have frequently been made in previous Hapsburg cultural historiography, from Carl Schorske's Fin-de-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture (New York, 1980) to a substantial body of recent literature including art-historical studies by authors such as Rampley, Reynolds-Cordileone, Werner Telesko, Rebecca Houze, and Elana Shapira, to the many publications tied to the 150th anniversary of the Ringstrasse in 2015, to the work of Pieter Judson, all of which interrogate ways that art, culture, and state actions were situated ideologically, especially around questions of national, imperial, and ethnic identity. Engaging directly with this literature might have led Staatskunst oder Kulturstaat to more nuanced conclusions that built on previous analyses in new ways.