25th Anniversary Exhibition: Masterworks from the Neue Galerie

Neue Galerie New York, the museum at Fifth Avenue and 86th Street devoted to early twentieth-century Austrian and German art, turns 25 this year. To mark the anniversary, it reopens its galleries on November 12 after a restoration of its landmark building, with "25th Anniversary Exhibition: Masterworks from the Neue Galerie" running through January 11, 2027. The installation occupies the entire building and draws mainly on the permanent collection.

The centerpiece is Gustav Klimt's Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I (1907), painted in oil with gold and silver on canvas and long the museum's signature work. Recent acquisitions join it. The presentation reflects the idea of the Gesamtkunstwerk, or total work of art, in which painting, craft and interior combine into the jewel-box atmosphere visitors associate with the house.

Other artists on view include Egon Schiele, Josef Hoffmann, Gabriele Münter, Moriz Jung, Marianne Brandt, Vasily Kandinsky and Alfred Kubin. Selected works range from Schiele's 1917 cityscape Town among Greenery (The Old City III) and Münter's In the Garden in Murnau (1911) to Kandinsky's Black Form (1923) and Kubin's ink drawing Aladdin (c. 1902). Design holds equal weight: Hoffmann's 1912 gold tobacco case, made by the Wiener Werkstätte and set with amber, coral, lapis lazuli, turquoise and other stones, sits alongside Brandt's 1927 tea infuser in tombac, ebony and silver from the Bauhaus metal workshop in Dessau. Jung's chromolithograph postcard Greyhound (1912) comes from the Leonard A. Lauder Collection.

The collection rests on gifts from co-founder Ronald S. Lauder, the estate of Estée Lauder and the Serge and Vally Sabarsky Foundation, with further donations from the Bloch-Bauer and Manley families and others, many of them highlighted here. The museum has announced a merger with The Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2028, which gives this anniversary showing added weight. Renée Price, the museum's director, and Janis Staggs, Director of Curatorial, organized the show.

The museum is open Wednesday through Monday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., and closed Tuesday. On Friday, November 13, First Fridays offers free access to the exhibition during opening week. Café Sabarsky, the book store and the design shop are already open on regular hours.