The Neue Galerie, a private museum on New York's Upper East Side founded by collector Ronald S. Lauder, will merge with the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2028. The institution will be renamed the Met Ronald S. Lauder Neue Galerie, or Met Neue for short. Lauder and his daughter Aerin Lauder Zinterhofer will contribute funds toward a $200 million endowment, along with 13 works from their collection, including a prized Gustav Klimt and paintings by German Expressionists. The Met plans to exhibit some holdings at its Fifth Avenue base, but Klimt's "Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I" will remain at the townhouse.
The merger significantly strengthens the Met's holdings in Austrian and German modernism, an area where its collection has been weak. It comes as the Met continues a $550 million expansion of its modern and contemporary art wing, designed by Frida Escobedo and set to open in 2030. The deal also deepens Ronald Lauder's longstanding relationship with the Met, where his late brother Leonard A. Lauder already has a research center named after him. The Neue Galerie becomes the Met's second annex after the Cloisters, following the closure of the Met Breuer in the 2010s.