Into the Unknown – Austria Since 1918 celebrates the centennial year of Austria as a democratic republic at the recently opened House of Austrian History. The exhibition is an examination of the republic’s birth, death, and rebirth of democracy and one of the darkest chapters in world history, Nazi occupation. Into the Unknown takes a critical, balanced look at the country’s recent heritage and what it means to be Austrian.
An award from the Julius Rosenwald Foundation enabled Selma Burke to travel to Vienna to study with the sculptor Michael Povolny in 1938, an auspicious time in a country that would soon be under the Nazi regime, especially for a Black American woman.