Conceived as an exhibition venue for the Gugging Artists and the field of Art Brut, the museum gugging presents the works of the Gugging Artists in the place they create them.

With this orientation, the museum gugging occupies a unique position within the Austrian museum landscape and is among the most important exhibition venues for Art Brut internationally.

The museum gugging has high expectations in terms of quality, and it measures itself according to international exhibition standards. Its visitor-friendly, service-oriented, barrier-free, inclusive and bilingual orientation is an inseparable part of its institutional culture.

The museum gugging draws on Jean Dubuffet’s concept of Art Brut and is engaged in an open scholarly discussion based on it. Dubuffet defined Art Brut as an unadulterated art created spontaneously and free of academic influence and prevailing trends. Around the world, the Gugging Artists have been among the essential representatives of Art Brut since the 1970s, and Jean Dubuffet personally recognized them as such.

The goals of the museum gugging are primarily focused on the presentation of art from Gugging. Exhibitions are assembled in house by our artistic director as well as by well-known Austrian and international curators. The museum gugging attributes special significance to a modern and responsive art eduction program, and it welcomes all visitors while devoting particular attention to young visitors.

Historically speaking, the museum gugging sees itself as a part of the art brut center gugging. Its location in Maria Gugging, its inclusion in the art brut center gugging and its direct proximity to the Gugging Artists all form a part of the museum’s unique character.

The art brut center gugging and the Institute of Science and Technology Austria research center, which opened in 2009, stand on a site that once contained the "Lower Austrian State Neurological Hospital East – Klosterneuburg-Gugging". Founded in Maria Gugging in 1885, this facility was closed down in 2007.

The psychiatrist Leo Navratil began conducting drawing tests for diagnostic purposes in the 1950s. At the same time, some of the drawings his patients created in this context stood out on account of their exceptional expressive power and originality, and this would eventually provide the impulse behind his art-psychotherapeutic orientation. 

In the mid-1960s, Navratil exchanged letters with the French artist Jean Dubuffet, the founder of Art Brut. Dubuffet referred to Art Brut as a primal art that displays a very personal formal idiom and often emerges spontaneously and outside the framework of academic or art-theoretical training. 

Dubuffet was visibly impressed by the artists Navratil had discovered, and he confirmed that the Gugging Artists were a part of Art Brut. Before that, in 1965, Navratil had published Schizophrenia and Art: This book stirred particularly great interest among artists such as Peter Pongratz and Arnulf Rainer and in the Austrian art world in general. 

Navratil wanted to provide his talented patients with access to a place to live and work that was separate from the rest of the hospital complex. The "Center for Art-Psychotherapy" was opened in 1981, and 18 patients moved in. The center was occupied exclusively by men because Navratil had spent 40 years working in men's wards. The blue star by the Gugging Artist Johann Hauser became the symbol of the center and its artists.

In 1983 the psychiatrist and artist Johann Feilacher became Navratil's assistant; it was due to his initiative that the Gugging Artists began painting the exterior of the building. The artist August Walla moved into the center that year and painted the walls of his room with motifs from his own polytheistic philosophy. 

Johann Feilacher took over for Leo Navratil in 1986. He transformed the "Center for Art-Psychotherapy," which had retained a clinical orientation, into a group home for artists: the "House of Artists." From then on, the focus was on its occupants' artistic talent, not their illness. 

The galerie gugging, which is owned by the Gugging Artists, was founded in 1994; in 1997 it was moved to a nearby vacant building that now contains the museum, gallery and studio. 

The atelier gugging opened in 2001 and is based on a simple concept: It offers not just the Gugging Artists but also other people interested in art an opportunity to develop. It sees itself as a place that supports personal creative potential.

In 2006 the museum gugging was opened by Johann Feilacher and Nina Katschnig. It is dedicated to the artistic work of the Gugging Artists and provides exciting insights into international Art Brut and other fine arts through its numerous, temporary special exhibitions.

The "House of Artists" was expanded and renovated in 2011, and women have also been living and working in this formerly exclusively male community for several years. Women artists have now found a home throughout the "House of Artists," atelier gugging, galerie gugging and museum gugging.