Since 1998, each year the museum in progress has worked with a living artist to transform the monumental safety curtain of the Vienna State Opera into one of Europe’s most significant recurring public art commissions. In generous recognition and support of this ongoing work, El Anatsui, the artist of the 2025/26 season, has created three striking prints—Male, Female, and Head—to underscore the impact of his project.   This is a unique opportunity to collect striking large-scale limited editions by one of the world’s greatest living artists. All proceeds from sales enable museum in progress to continue its inspired work. 

Anatsui’s Safety Curtain project XOHANAMI (Ewe for “receive our song”) presented the image of a massed crowd, constituted from wooden trays that fuel local market activity in Ghana and are the first found materials that Anatsui used for his art in the 1970s. Anatsui's three different figures isolate the human presence in an intimate register. Printed directly from individual wooden figures from the “crowd”, the prints gather layers of color and nuance during the printing process. 

Produced at Chavanne & Pechmann’s renowned print studio, Male, Female and Head translate Anatsui’s sculptural language into a vibrant and joyous graphic register.