Klimts and Questions at the Neue Galerie

Gustav Klimt: The Ronald S. Lauder and Serge Sabarsky Collections opens today at the Neue Galerie. Lauder made headlines when he bought Klimt's Adele Bloch-Bauer I from Maria Altmann in June of 2006 for $135 million, then a record price for a painting. Apart from the gilded price tag, the purchase caught everyone's attention because the painting had been restituted to Altmann, Bloch-Bauer's niece, by the Austrian government after a protracted battle. No surprise, the piece drew crowds when it went on view at Lauder's Upper East Side museum shortly after its acquisition. After the other four Klimt paintings returned to Altmann — including another portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer — were auctioned off at Christie's last November for nearly $200 million, this exhibition is likely to bring more people (including gawkers) to East 86th Street.

But it's also drawing some unwelcome attention: Art blogger Lee Rosenbaum has called out the incomplete provenance information that the museum has made available to the public. Robin Pogrebin mainstreams that story in today's edition of the New York Times. The incomplete accounts of the hands through which pieces in the museum's collection have passed raises eyebrows because much of it is the same kind of work collected by European Jews between WWI and WWII and lost under Nazi occupation. Here's an excerpt from Pogrebin's piece:

Asked by The New York Times for an inventory of his German and Austrian works and related provenance information, he declined to release such material. "It's my private collection," he said. "Would it be O.K. for people to see what dresses you have in your closet?"

But that's exactly what Lauder is doing — opening his closet to the public. By putting the works in his collection on public view, he's inviting public scrutiny.

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