The directorate of the Leopold Museum and the Board of the Leopold Museum Privacy Foundation Museum founder and collector Prof. Rudolf Leopold on the occasion of his 100th birthday. On March 1, 1925, a hundred years ago, the “passionate collector” was born in Vienna. From the late 1950s to the mid-1990s, Rudolf Leopold brought together more than 5,200 works of art, which he brought to the Leopold Museum Privat Foundation, which was founded with the support of the Republic and the National Bank in 1994. In 2001 the Leopold Museum in the Vienna Museums Quartier, built especially for the collection, followed the crowning glory for the tireless activity of the passionate art lover.
“The Leopold Museum, a collector’s museum Par Excellence, is one of the most important European museums and has a central place in the Austrian museum landscape. On Rudolf Leopold’s side, his wife Elisabeth (1926-2024), who would have turned 99 this year, supported her husband’s collecting activity with great commitment and, even after the death of the founder, tirelessly brought himself into museum events as an art mediator, curator and in a journalist manner. “
Hans-Peter Wipplinger, director of the Leopold Museum
Success story: one of the most important collections of Austrian art
The Leopold Museum houses one of the most important collections of Austrian art in the 19th and 20th centuries, which now includes around 8,800 works and numerous permanent loans. The success story of the Leopold Museum, which has existed for almost 25 years, in which around 130 exhibitions have been presented to date, not least shows the great visitor interest; During this period, around 9 million visitors visited the museum.
Focus on Schiele and Viennese modernity
The focus of the Leopold Museum is on the permanent presentation Vienna 1900. Departure in modernity With the world’s largest Egon Schiele collection, masterpieces of Gustav Klimt, handicrafts of the Viennese workshop with comprehensive complexes of work by Josef Hoffmann, Koloman Moser or the most extensive permanent presentations of the expressionists Oskar Kokoschka and Richard Gerstl.
In addition to the exhibitions in -house, the Leopold Museum also sees itself as a cultural ambassador to Austria abroad. Most recently, extremely successful collection presentations for artists from Wiener Moderne, 2023 in the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum (Egon Schiele from the Collection of the Leopold Museum – Young Genius in Vienna 1900) Or currently, until March 3, in the National Museum of Korea in Seoul (Vienna 1900: The Dreaming Artists – From Gustav Klimt to Egon Schiele. The Leopold Museum Collection) be realized.
Two live for art. Matinee to remember Rudolf and Elisabeth Leopold
As an appreciation of the work of Rudolf and Elisabeth Leopold, the museum organizes a concertmatine on Sunday, March 2, at 11 a.m., at the Leopold Museum director Hans-Peter Wipplinger and Rudolf Leopold’s younger son Diethard Leopold. Under the motto “Two lives for art”, the Matinee takes place in the lower atrium of the museum in memory of the Rudolf and Elisabeth Leopold collector’s couple. The musician Rudolf Leopold, cellist and older son of Prof. Leopold, plays with Maria Kubizek (violin), Marta Potuska (viola) and Markus Hoffmann (violin) Anton Bruckners String quartet in C minor and Franz Schuberts String quartet in D minor “Death and the girl”. Egon Schiele dedicated his famous painting to this topic Death and girl (1915). The concert can be visited free of charge with a valid museum sticket.