There is also a German outpost between the Metropolitan and Guggenheim Museums, in the middle of the New York Museum Mile. The Neue Galerie is dedicated to art from German-speaking countries.
the essentials in brief
- A record made the Neue Galerie world famous in one fell swoop.
In 2006 the cosmetics entrepreneur Ronald Lauder bought the painting “Adele Bloch-Bauer I” by the Austrian Art Nouveau artist Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) for the record price of 135 million dollars at the time – and hung it in his museum.
«This is our Mona Lisa. You only buy something like that once in a lifetime, ”commented Lauder at the time. The “Goldene Adele” became a crowd puller, at times hundreds of people stood in line and paid up to 50 dollars to see the work up close.
Lauders Museum, the Neue Galerie on Museum Mile in Central Park in New York, will be 20 years old this Tuesday (November 16) – and the “Golden Adele” is still the central exhibit that is much loved by visitors.
“People react to the ornamental, to the gold,” said Renée Price, who has run the museum since it was founded, once told the German press agency. “It’s almost like being on a psychedelic LSD trip when you look at Adele, for example, this elegant woman in her golden armor. It’s just the fascination of this time. “
“The arrival of this painting completely changed the museum and it remains the central exhibit in our collection”, Lauder writes in the foreword to the catalog for the anniversary exhibition “Modern Worlds: Austrian and German Art, 1890-1940”, which began on November 11 and can be seen until March 13th.
The road to the Neue Galerie actually began in the 1960s, writes Lauder. «That was in 1968 when I was 24 years old and met a man named Serge Sabarsky. I was fascinated by German and Austrian expressionist art, and Serge, who came from Vienna and lived in New York, was the best expert in the world for it. “
For decades the friends have been planning a joint museum for art from German-speaking countries in New York, they find a building at the turn of the century on posh Fifth Avenue – and then Sabarsky dies in 1996. September 2001 New York and the world shake.
The billion dollar fortune of the cosmetics heir secures the existence of the museum and the expansion of the collection, which in addition to Klimt includes works by Egon Schiele, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc and Paul Klee. The Neue Galerie was able to survive the month-long closure during the corona pandemic and only opened its doors – with restrictions – to visitors in June 2021 as one of the last museums in New York. The museum bistro with a real Viennese café-house atmosphere – named after Sabarsky – has also reopened.
“Everywhere I go, I hear how much people like the Neue Galerie,” writes the 77-year-old Lauder. «After my family, it is the achievement that makes me the proudest. It brings me consolation to know that long after my death people who have not yet been born will stand in line to come in, taste the Sachertorte at Café Sabarsky, and take a look at one of the most impressive ages of creativity to throw in the history of mankind. “
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