Vienna Museum of Ethnology

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The Vienna Museum of Ethnology (Museum für Völkerkunde) is currently housed in the Neue Hofburg and it has a quarter million ethnographical and archaeological objects from Asia, Africa, Oceania, and America. Important collections include Mexican artifacts, with unique Aztec featherwork; part of James Cook's collection of Polynesia and Northwest Coast art; numerous Benin bronzes; the collection of Charles von Hügel from India, Southeast Asia, and China; artifacts collected during the circumnavigation of the globe by the SMS Novara; and two of the remaining rongorongo tablets.

The museum's most famous, and controversial piece, is what is believed to be Moctezuma's Headdress. The importance of this piece, since it belonged to the last Aztec Emperor Moctezuma , has created friction between the Mexican and the Austrian governments. The last attempt to recover the piece by former president Vicente Fox proved fruitless in the end. The piece was illegally taken from Mexico by the Spanish, but it entered Austria legally after it was purchased from France in 1880.

The museum is not to be confused with the Austrian Folklore Museum, (the Österreichisches Museum für Volkskunde), which has a similar name in German but concentrates on European artifacts.