Manhattan's Neue Galerie to Merge With Met Museum
Cosmetics billionaire Ronald Lauder's private museum has a vast collection of Austrian and German art.
In a surprise move, cosmetics billionaire Ronald Lauder's Neue Galerie will merge with the Metropolitan Museum of Art down the street on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue.
The rare merger will come into effect in 2028, The Met announced in a statement today, May 14.
Neue Galerie holds a collection of late 19th- and early 20th-century artworks from Austria and Germany, including its star attraction: Gustav Klimt's gold-leafed "Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I" (1907). It's also known for its collection of masterpieces by Egon Schiele, Oskar Kokoschka, Max Beckmann, Gabriele Münter, Josef Hoffmann, and others.
Lauder and dealer Serge Sabarsky, a collector of Austrian and German art, co-founded the museum together in November 2001. In a press release, Lauder billed the merger as a way to "strengthen the Neue Galerie’s legacy in perpetuity."
The merger comes nearly 80 years after The Met absorbed the once-independent Museum of Costume Art, creating its Costume Institute, the beneficiary of its annual Met Gala. But unlike that 1946 merger, during which the Met absorbed the Costume Art Museum's collection, the Neue Galerie will retain its space and remain a fully staffed institution, a Met spokesperson told Hyperallergic.
Lauder, heir of the Estée Lauder fortune, is a longtime Met trustee who gifted the museum a collection of Cubist artworks worth over $1 billion in 2013 and 91 arms and armor in 2020. His net worth is estimated at $4.9 billion, according to Forbes.
In recent years, the billionaire has come under scrutiny for his financial backing of Donald Trump — his lifelong friend — and other Republican candidates. In November 2024, pro-Palestinian protesters called on MoMA, where he serves as honorary chair, to sever ties with the billionaire over his support of the government of Israel (he also serves as president of the Zionist World Jewish Congress).
As part of the forthcoming merger, the art collector and his daughter, Aerin Lauder Zinterhofer, will donate 13 additional paintings from their personal collection to the new combined institution, including Gustav Klimt's "Die Tänzerin (The Dancer)" (circa 1916–18) and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's "Die Russische Tänzerin Mela (The Russian Dancer Mela)" (1911). The two will also make an undisclosed endowment gift for the long-term care of the new combined institution. Other trustees of the museum have also pitched in to establish a "significant endowment" for the collection.
