It has galleries and collections in many subject areas including archaeology, geology, paleontology, mineralogy, botany, zoology, history, art and folk culture.

In 2003, coinciding with the designation of Graz as the sole European Capital of Culture for that year, the Joanneum was spun off into a GmbH (Limited Liability Company).

While the Joanneum gained some autonomy in business, marketing and budgetary decision-making with this move, the Province of Styria remains the successor of Archduke Johann and retains all ownership and property rights to the buildings and collections.

The Joanneum employs an international team of about 500 people across fields from visitor services to acquisitions, conservation and preservation to scientific research.

Steeped in tradition, the Joanneum collects, preserves, conserves, researches and conveys a broad spectrum of information dealing with the nature, history, culture and art of Styria in an international context with an eye towards the future.

[citation needed] It was opened in 1913, and is located in a former Capuchin cloister just inside Graz's only remaining Renaissance city-gate, the Paulustor (St. Paul's Gate), erected under Ferdinand II.

The library of folklore contains over 14,000 individual volumes as well as an archive of original material and over 20,000 slides and historic photographs documenting the life of rural Styria.

The collection emphasizes the life, fashion and beliefs of the Styrian people, showing the social and cultural relations between the person and the objects left behind.

[clarification needed] The complex also includes the Antoniuskirche (Church of St. Anthony) with original paintings by Giovanni Pietro de Pomis and Hans Adam Weissenkircher where the traditional "Styrian Shepherds' and Nativity Songs" are presented annually along with new compositions by local composers.

The Styrian ducal hat, the magnificent coach of Emperor Frederick III and a stone coat of arms from the Graz Castle count among the most significant objects in the collection.

It was opened in 2019 after a four-year planning phase as a joint project of the Graz Children's Museum FRida & freD and the Universalmuseum Joanneum.

500 million years Styrian history are gathered here: Fossilized remains of earlier living beings reveal information about ice ages, tropical seas, ancient forests and marshes.

[12] The palace, designed by court architect Giovanni Pietro de Pomis,[13] according to the inspiration of the Spanish El Escorial, is both an opulent residence intended to convey the wealth, might and status of owner-builder Hans Ulrich von Eggenberg as well as a complex allegory of the cosmos.

The climax of this piano nobile is the Planetary Room, which owes its name to the cycle of ceiling and wall paintings (completed in 1685) that adorn it, by court painter Hans Adam Weissenkircher.

[15] His elegant melding of astrological and hermetic images, numerology and family mythology into a complicated allegory of the "Golden Age" of the House of Eggenberg is counted among the most important and impressive systems of early Baroque room-art in Central Europe.

[16] Beginning with the Renaissance and going through Mannerism to the late Baroque, works by Lucas Cranach the Elder, Dosso Dossi, Sofonisba Anguissola, Bartholomeus Spranger, Pieter Brueghel the Younger, Martin Johann Schmidt and Angelica Kauffman are on display in the early modern period collection.

Additionally, Friesacher and Grazer Pfennigs from the Middle Ages and coins and medallions from the Inner Austrian mints in Graz, Klagenfurt and St. Veit an der Glan as well as from other lands of the Austro-Hungarian Empire are on display.

The permanent collection, with an additional room for temporary exhibitions, is fittingly situated in the oldest portion of palace dating to the late Middle Ages and once belonging to Balthasar Eggenberger, mint master and financier to Emperor Frederick III in the early days of Mercantilism.

One of the most significant Roman stonemasonry collections of the eastern Alps is in the adjacent Lapidarium: 96 stones, including gravestones, monuments, medallions and round sculptures, three large remnants of mosaic floors as well as a prominent exhibit, the nearly three meter high grave stele of L.

As part of the preparations for the city of Graz's tenure as the 2003 European Capital of Culture it was integrated into the Universalmuseum Joanneum and continues to serve this function.

A special highlight of this blob architecture building is the "Needle": a glass viewing platform that looks out across the Mur River towards the Graz city center and the Grazer Schlossberg.

The BIX façade on the eastern (Mur) face of the KHG serves as an "urban screen" with 925 programmable fluorescent lamps that display messages and moving patterns of light on the surroundings.

This museum offers visitors a glimpse into the everyday life, worship, and death cults of what was once the most cultured town of the Roman province of Noricum.

In 1664 the area was bought by the Styrian provincial governor, Count Siegmund Friedrich von Trauttmansdorff and subsequently converted and expanded by him into an early Baroque residence that bears his name.

The staterooms feature both Renaissance and Baroque frescoes and paintings as well as the Antler Room of the Counts of Lemberg, and the stunning Marble Hall all of which are open to visitors.

Beginning in the 1950s a concerted effort was made to collect objects relating to the natural and cultural history of the Ennstal region of Upper Styria and the Styrian Salzkammergut.

The permanent show collection presents about 1000 exhibits relating to both the land and the people over the course of history in of the Ennstal Valley as well as the Ausseerland from the Middle Ages to the early modern era.

Schloss Stainz is a former Augustinian Canons Regular monastery purchased by Archduke Johann in 1840 and remains in the estate of his heirs, the Counts of Meran.

The main focus of the agriculture collection is to show the rural farming, husbandry and forestry techniques prior to the Industrial Revolution as well as related implements and photographic evidence.

The open areas hold a smithy, a cabbage pit, herb garden, an orchard and a small field to demonstrate various aspects of this pre-industrial, rural lifestyle.