The year 1776 saw Duke Albert of Saxe-Teschen begin assembling a graphic arts collection that, in 1919, would be taken over by the Austrian state together with the palace that housed it as a museum for art ranging from Renaissance masterpieces to contemporary works.
Today’s ALBERTINA museum is deliberately positioned as something of a Janus-faced institution: the renovated and authentically re-furnished staterooms stand for the princely lifestyle once maintained at this former Habsburg residence, while the ALBERTINA museums large-scale temporary exhibitions plus its permanent presentation of modernist and contemporary paintings attest to its character as a thoroughly modern museum.
Source:
albertina.at