Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
NEUE GALERIE
1048 Fifth Ave at E 86th St. Subway #4, #5, #6 to 86th St.
212 628 6200,
www.neuegalerie.org
.
Thurs-Mon 11am-6pm. $20.
MAP
Dedicated to early twentieth-century art from Austria and Germany, the
Neue Galerie
occu-
pies an ornate Beaux-Arts mansion built in 1914. It's a relatively small space and the exhib-
its tend to rotate, but the collection contains some real gems.
The galleries begin on the second floor, where the undoubted star is Gustav Klimt's
Por-
trait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I
(1907), a resplendent gold portrait from Klimt's “Golden Peri-
od”. The Bloch-Bauers were one of Vienna's richest Jewish families; the painting was
looted by the Nazis in 1938, but descendants sued the Austrian government and had the
painting returned in 2006 - the gallery is said to have paid $135 million for it soon after. On
this floor you'll also find exceptional work by Egon Schiele and Max Oppenheimer, while
the third floor is usually reserved for rotating work of German Expressionism: look out for
Paul Klee, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Otto Dix.
