“Egon Schiele: The Ronald S. Lauder and Serge Sabarsky Collections,” an exhibition on view at the Neue Galerie, will be one of the most popular events of the 2005–6 art season.1 Visitors to the newest addition to the Upper East Side’s Museum Mile—the Neue Galerie, dedicated exclusively to Germanic art—will enter its door after having patiently stood in line. A significant number of young patrons will visit the Neue Galerie for the first time, eager to acquaint themselves with the angst-ridden art of the Austrian Modernist. The museum’s overview of Schiele’s art will, in fact, be the most heavily trafficked exhibition in its short history and, in all likelihood, for the foreseeable future.
The statements above, in other words, aren’t feats of clairvoyance. They are the received wisdom—that is, for anyone with even the barest comprehension of contemporary culture. Unlike “Egon Schiele: The Leopold Collection, Vienna,” an exhibition seen at the Museum of Modern Art in 1997 (and the last time the work was seen in any depth), the Neue Galerie show is peculiarly, perhaps even presciently, in sync with the times.
It is certainly less troubled by history. The MOMA show was plagued by controversy. Schiele’s sexually and psychologically charged imagery was obscured by matters of restitution. Two pictures in the exhibition had been seized by the Nazis in 1939 from the collection of a Jewish family living in Austria; the family wanted them back. The press had a field day. The Schiele pieces at
