Opening “Bridges, Baths, Boulevards”

With its impressive paintings, posters, photographs, plans and glass slides, the exhibition “Bridges, Baths, Boulevards” recalls old Graz, those times when beauty was still a declared planning goal and the state capital claimed to be a big city, but without the hustle and bustle and with a humane face.

Bridges have always connected the two banks of the Mur. Technical and architectural masterpieces created visible points of reference but also bourgeois identification with the city. Baths were used for hygiene and sport, but were also egalitarian meeting places and spaces where social differences were levelled out. Partly opening into centrally located squares, as an independent, unifying sphere, boulevards and promenades were urban stages of seeing and being seen, but also of social differentiation in social diversity.