In a rare convergence of cultural forces, the Neue Galerie New York and its significant collection of 20th-century Austrian and German art will merge with the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2028, both institutions announced on Thursday.<\/p>\n
The Neue, which the cosmetics heir Ronald S. Lauder opened in 2001<\/a>, most famously features the gold-flecked Gustav Klimt portrait known as the Woman in Gold. Once the Neue merges with the Met, the largest museum in the country, it will be renamed the Met Ronald S. Lauder Neue Galerie and referred to as the Met Neue Galerie.<\/p>\n \u201cThis represents an enormous opportunity,\u201d said Max Hollein, the Met\u2019s director and chief executive, who for 20 years has served on the Neue\u2019s board. \u201cIt allows us to be the custodian, not only of an enormous amount of very important works of art, but also of a place with profound integrity and beauty and vision.\u201d<\/p>\n Lauder said the merger aimed to preserve the Neue\u2019s jewel box character beyond his tenure as co-founder, president and chairman. He added that he was reassured by how the Cloisters, the Met\u2019s medieval art branch, has maintained an independent identity.<\/p>\n \u201cSomehow I don\u2019t think I\u2019m going to live to 120,\u201d said Lauder, 82. \u201cI want to make sure that after I\u2019m no longer there \u2014 whatever happens \u2014 the Neue Galerie will stay the Neue Galerie.\u201d<\/p>\n To create an endowment that has been estimated at $200 million for the long-term care and preservation of the Neue, Lauder and his daughter, Aerin Lauder Zinterhofer, plan to make a substantial gift. They are also donating 13 Austrian and German paintings from their personal collection to the combined institutions.<\/p>\n Those works include Klimt\u2019s large-scale portrait \u201cDie T\u00e4nzerin (The Dancer)\u201d (circa 1916-18); Ernst Ludwig Kirchner\u2019s \u201cDie Russische T\u00e4nzerin Mela (The Russian Dancer Mela)\u201d (1911); and Max Beckmann\u2019s \u201cGalleria Umberto\u201d (1925). Their promised gifts also include Klimt\u2019s \u201cThe Black Feather Hat\u201d (1910), and works by Otto Dix, George Grosz and Franz Marc.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is an area where the Met\u2019s collection is not very strong,\u201d Hollein said. \u201cIf you look at Vienna 1900, Berlin 1920s \u2014 this was really the epicenter of the development of the avant-garde and it\u2019s important to have a broad and deep collection there.\u201d<\/p>\n Asked if he had stipulated certain protective conditions in the merger, Lauder quipped, \u201cOnly about 30 pages.\u201d<\/p>\n The Museums Special Section<\/p>\n Will the Met be able to borrow artworks to display in its flagship Fifth Avenue location? \u201cFor an exhibition perhaps, but not certain pieces,\u201d Lauder said. Those exceptions include the Woman in Gold, formally titled \u201cPortrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I\u201d (1907), which Lauder bought privately in 2006 for $135 million<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201c\u2018Adele Bloch-Bauer\u2019 stays where it is,\u201d Lauder said. \u201cIt is our Mona Lisa.\u201d<\/p>\n Hollein, who is Austrian, has known Lauder since he was a teenager. When Lauder served as U.S. ambassador to Austria for a year in the 1980s, he became friendly with Hollein\u2019s father, the prominent postmodern architect Hans Hollein, and his mother, Helene Hollein, a fashion designer. Over time, Lauder said he came to admire Max Hollein\u2019s stewardship of museums<\/a> like the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and several institutions in Frankfurt.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I started working on the Neue Galerie, one of the first people I spoke to was Max,\u201d Lauder said. \u201cHe was with us almost from the beginning.\u201d<\/p>\n The Neue Galerie, at 86th Street and Fifth Avenue, is the Met\u2019s neighbor. Hollein also likened its Beaux-Arts 1914 mansion environment to one of the Met\u2019s period rooms, providing a holistic experience that makes a visitor \u201ctravel in time.\u201d<\/p>\n Most of the new endowment for the Neue has already been raised thanks to an undisclosed lead gift from Marina Kellen French, a Met board member, and contributions from other trustees including Candace K. Beinecke, Daniel Brodsky and Blair Effron.<\/p>\n Max Beckmann\u2019s \u201cGalleria Umberto\u201d (1925) is one of the 16 artworks that Lauder and his daughter will be donating to the Met and Neue Galerie once they merge.Credit…Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; via Neue Galerie New York<\/p>\n It is unclear what the museum merger will mean for the Neue\u2019s founding director, Ren\u00e9e Price, who earned a total compensation package of about $922,000 in the 2024 fiscal year, according to the most recently available tax forms.<\/p>\n \u201cThe next couple of months will allow us to work on the operational structure,\u201d Hollein said. \u201cHow we are going to run this and who is going to be in charge of what \u2014 we\u2019ll address that a bit later.\u201d<\/p>\n Price, for her part, said she envisioned the merger as \u201ca collaboration.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIf I can put it in musical terms, it\u2019s like we play chamber music and the Met has a powerful orchestra with a big choir,\u201d she continued. \u201cWe can make music together.\u201d<\/p>\n Lauder has had a long tenure as a trustee at the Museum of Modern Art, but he has also built a relationship with the Met. In 2020 he gave 91 pieces of arms and armor to the Met<\/a>, whose Arms and Armor galleries were then named after him. (In 2013, Lauder\u2019s brother, Leonard A. Lauder<\/a>, gave the Met his collection of 78 Cubist paintings, drawings and sculptures, valued at more than $1 billion<\/a>.)<\/p>\n \u201cMy feeling towards MoMA does not change,\u201d Ronald Lauder said. \u201cIt\u2019s a museum I love, and I care very, very much about it.\u201d<\/p>\n Lauder began collecting Austrian art while still a teenager in the late 1950s and a decade later became a client and friend of Serge Sabarsky, a longtime New York dealer<\/a> in Austrian and German art. To create an intimate museum like the Morgan Library or the Frick, they in 1994 purchased a Beaux-Arts mansion, designed by Carr\u00e8re & Hastings, which was then renovated by the architect Annabelle Selldorf.<\/p>\n The resulting Neue Galerie has become known almost as much for the Wiener schnitzel and Sacher torte in its Caf\u00e9 Sabarsky as for the Klimts, Schieles and Beckmanns on the gallery walls.<\/p>\n