
Timber! Art and Woodwork at the Fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire
August 30, 2025 - January 4, 2026
Cargill Gallery
Free Exhibition
This exhibition centers on Egon Schiele’s haunting and rarely seen masterpiece, Sawmill (1913), on loan from a private collection. A mill, located on the boundary of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, is surrounded by piles of freshly cut timber, but itself seems to be in a process of collapse. The mill can be read as a symbol of the empire, which in 1913 was in a precarious state as its provinces demanded autonomy. The exhibition represents two outcomes for the sawmill’s timber: a wooden bridge in another painting by Schiele and avant-garde wooden furniture, created mostly by Schiele’s friend and mentor, the designer Josef Hoffmann.
Egon Schiele. Sawmill, 1913. Oil on canvas. Kallir Family Foundation, New York.