December 2001 - Nr. 12
German-Austrian Art Gallery Opens in New York City
TWIG - A new museum for German and Austrian art opened to the public Friday (November 16), celebrating European modernism in a gem of a beaux arts townhouse on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue. The Neue Galerie New York showcases works by early twentieth-century artists, from Vienna secessionist Gustav Klimt to German expressionists Max Beckman and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Decorative arts from the Wiener Werkstaette and Bauhaus design movements are also on display.
Taking its name from another great museum of the modern era, Vienna’s Neue Galerie, the museum was conceived by New York art collectors Ronald S. Lauder and Serge Sabarsky, who shared a passion for modern German and Austrian art for nearly 30 years. "Starting this museum was our dream," Lauder explained in an interview with the New York Times. The two became friends in 1967 after discovering a mutual interest in the Austrian painter Egon Schiele. Sabarsky bought the building for the Neue Galerie in 1994, two years before he died. Mr. Lauder later purchased it and funded a painstaking renovation by architect Annabelle Selldorf, a native of Cologne.
The gallery occupies the entire mansion, with the second and third floors devoted to exhibitions. A bookstore, design shop, and Viennese-style café are on the ground floor. The collection is composed of over 800 works from the Sabarsky Foundation, 500 from the Lauder family and 100 purchased by the museum. "Most of these works have never been seen in public before," says Lauder. Included are more than 100 paintings and graphic works by Klimt and Schiele, making the Neue Galerie New York the largest repository for works by these artists outside Vienna. Its opening exhibition, "New Worlds: German and Austrian Art, 1890-1940," will run through February 18.
