Verklempt Over Klimt

ArtsJournal readers who are new to CultureGrrl will have to excuse to my penchant for occasionally dishing in Yiddish. ("Overcome with emotion" is a rough translation of the "V" word, above.)

What I'm "verklempt" about is my worry over whether poor Adele has finally found safe haven. (CultureGrrl has already klopped the Klimt here, here and here.)

Maria Altmann, one of the heirs of Ferdinand and Adele Bloch-Bauer, to whom five Klimts, including the Golden Girl, were restituted by the Austrian government, has said that her family is gratified that the famous painting of her aunt "will remain on permanent view in such a worthy museum."

But how permanent is that museum?

Merely five years old, the Neue Galerie, New York, lacks the wide support-base of visitors, lenders and donors enjoyed by long established public museums. A private operating foundation established for display of early 20th-century German and Austrian art, it owes almost everything---most of the art it displays and the funds that support its existence---to one man, its co-founder and president, cosmetics magnate Ronald Lauder. (Its other co-founder, New York dealer Serge Sabarsky, died in 1996.)

On the day when "Adele Bloch-Bauer I" met the press in New York, I was informed that only about 10 percent of the institution's art belongs to the Neue Galerie itself (including the newly acquired Golden Girl); about 10 percent belongs to the Sabarsky Collection; and about 80 percent comes from Lauder's own holdings. He is, of course, free to do whatever he wishes with what he owns.

So I asked Lauder, over a slice of Linzertorte in the Neue Galerie's Café Sabarsky, how sure we could be that his young institution would, in fact, endure and thrive. He informed me that he had no intention of selling the works at the Neue Galerie and that the foundation was backed by "enough money for the next 200 years."

He also vowed that "Adele Bloch-Bauer I" would remain on permanent view in a room that would always be devoted solely to the work of Gustav Klimt. If Lauder is frustrated in his desire to acquire the four other Bloch-Bauer Klimts, Adele will not lack for suitable companionship: The Neue Galerie has on hand eight other works by that artist, he said.

COMING SOON: The Neue Galerie Lags in Posting Its Nazi-Era Research