The museum was first conceived by two close friends, art dealer Serge Sabarsky and entrepreneur and philanthropist Ronald S. Lauder. The two men met in 1967, just before Sabarsky opened his first gallery. The Serge Sabarsky Gallery opened at 987 Madison Avenue in 1968, and almost immediately earned a reputation as New York’s leading gallery for Austrian and German Expressionist art. Lauder was a frequent visitor and client. Both Sabarsky and Lauder enjoyed a passionate commitment to the art of this period, and they dreamed of someday opening a museum to showcase the very best of this work. When Sabarsky died in 1996, Lauder chose to carry on the task of creating Neue Galerie New York, as a tribute to his friend.
The museum also contains a bookstore, design shop, and two Viennese cafés, "Café Sabarsky" and "Café Fledermaus", both of which are operated by restaurateur Kurt Gutenbrunner.
The museum is housed in an elegant Louis XIII/Beaux-Arts structure located on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 86th Street. Commissioned by industrialist William Starr Miller in 1914 from the New York-based architecture firm Carrère and Hastings, it was subsequently occupied by Grace Vanderbilt, the wife of Cornelius Vanderbilt III, and then by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research before being purchased by Lauder and Sabarsky in 1994. The building was fully renovated by German architect Annabelle Selldorf and restored to its original state before the Neue Galerie opened.
In 2006, Lauder purchased Klimt's painting Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I on behalf of the Neue Galerie. Citing a confidentiality agreement, Lauder would only confirm that the purchase price was more than the last record price of $104.2 million US for Picasso's 1905 Boy With a Pipe. The press reported the price for the Klimt at US$135 million, which would make it at that time the most expensive painting ever sold.[1] It has been on display at the museum since July 2006.
Past exhibitions
Gustav Klimt: The Ronald S. Lauder and Serge Sabarsky Collections opened October 18, 2007, and ran until June 30, 2008 and it filled all the gallery spaces in the museum. Featuring highlights from the private collections of the museum's cofounders, it was comprised of 8 paintings and over 120 works on paper by the Austrian avant-garde artist Gustav Klimt. The show also included an installation of the original furniture from the receiving parlor of Klimt’s studio at Josefstädter Strasse 21, and a recreation of Klimt’s masterpiece, the Beethoven Frieze.[2]
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: Berlin Street Scene opened July 26, 2007, and ran until September 17, 2007. It was an exhibition focusing on a painting by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, which was restituted in November of 2006[3] and which joined the collection of the Neue Galerie at the beginning of the summer of 2007. In addition to Berlin Street Scene, the exhibition featured a Kirchner sculpture, Standing Girl, Karyatide (1909-10), as well as a selection of paintings and works on paper that survey Berlin during the period; by Kirchner, Otto Dix, George Grosz, and Christian Schad.[4]
Van Gogh and Expressionism opened March 22, 2007, and ran until July 2, 2007. It explored the crucial influence of Vincent van Gogh on German and Austrian Expressionism. More than 80 paintings and drawings were on view, including a number of major canvases by Van Gogh, as well as important paintings by Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Oskar Kokoschka, Alexei von Jawlensky, Franz Marc, Vasily Kandinsky, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Emil Nolde, and others. This exhibition, organized by curator Jill Lloyd, the well-known scholar of Expressionism, filled all the gallery spaces in the museum.[5]
