The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Neue Galerie New York, known for its collection of German and Austrian art, are set to merge in 2028, the museums said on Thursday. The Neue Galerie will operate as a branch of the Met, located diagonally opposite the museum on Fifth Avenue and will be officially renamed "The Met Ronald S Lauder Neue Galerie", after its entrepreneur founder, the museums said in a press release. Max Hollein, the Austrian-born director of the Met since 2018, said ahead of the announcement that "for the art world, this means that one of New York's most beloved and distinctive cultural institutions — the Neue Galerie, built by Ronald Lauder — will not only be preserved, but will continue exactly as the museum it was always meant to be". The merger will also bring the Met a collection of "icons of art history", Hollein said, including works by Egon Schiele, Gabriele Münter, Oskar Kokoschka, Max Beckmann, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc and Paul Klee. According to Hollein, the acquisition will fill "a significant gap" in the Met's collection in "an incredibly impressive way". Founded in 1870, the Met boasts a comprehensive collection from around the world spanning from antiquity to the modern era and attracts around 6 million visitors per year. The Neue Galerie will not be the first additional branch of the Met. The Met Cloisters branch in northern Manhattan shows medieval art, while the Met Breuer previously displayed a collection of modern and contemporary works until its closure in 2020. The star of the Neue Galerie is the painting "Adele Bloch-Bauer I" by Austrian Art Nouveau artist Gustav Klimt (1862-1918), which Lauder purchased at auction in 2006 for a then-record price of $135 million. The so-called Lady in Gold became a crowd favourite, attracting long queues of people, with some paying up to $50 to see the work upclose. The merger with the Met "will preserve and strengthen the Neue Galerie's legacy in perpetuity", 82-year-old Lauder said. In addition to the turn-of-the-century building on Fifth Avenue and the current collection, Lauder and his daughter Aerin Lauder Zinterhofer plan to donate 13 works from their private collection to the Met, including famous paintings by Klimt, Kirchner and Beckmann. An endowment fund will also be established for the ongoing operation of the Met Ronald S Lauder Neue Galerie, Hollein said. — dpa
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