In 1886 he began curatorial training in the Austrian Museum of Art and Industry, succeeding another student, Franz Wickhoff, in 1887. As curator of the textile collection, much of Riegl’s theoretical work was directly informed by his contact with folk objects in the museum’s collection. He specifically acknowledges this in the introduction to his seminal book Stilfragen (1893), in which he considers the history of ornamentation and strives to create a place for this understudied idiom alongside the higher canonical arts of painting and sculpture.
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| View of the Exhibition Austrian House Industry and Folk Art held at the Museum of Art and Industry, Vienna, November 1905 to February 1906. |
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| View of the Exhibition Austrian House Industry and Folk Art held at the Museum of Art and Industry, Vienna, November 1905 to February 1906. |
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| Franz Wickhoff |
Founded in 1863, the Austrian Museum for Art and Industry was the first institution on the continent to implement the principles of design reform originating from London's South Kensington Museum.
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| South Kensington Museum. |
While working for the next ten years as curator of textiles at the Austrian museum. Riegl’s first two books, Altorientalische Teppiche and Stilfragen: Grundlegungen zu einer Geschichte der Ornamentik, 1891 and 1893 respectively, follow from his work in the museum. Even in these first books, his interest in theory as well as an interdisciplinary view of art history was evident.