When two become one: the complex dance of museum mergers

New York’s Neue Galerie will merge with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, with the Met set to fully take over in 2028 and rename the institution the Met Ronald S. Lauder Neue Galerie. The Neue Galerie, founded in 2001 and built around Ronald S. Lauder’s collection of about 600 works valued at an estimated $1.5 billion, will be absorbed by the Met, founded in 1870 and holding nearly two million objects spanning 5,000 years. The merger will bring major Austrian and German Modernist works by artists including Egon Schiele, Gabriele Münter, Oskar Kokoschka, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Max Beckmann, and Josef Hoffmann, and Lauder and his daughter Aerin Lauder Zinterhofer will donate 13 additional works, including pieces by Otto Dix, George Grosz, Christian Schad, and Gustav Klimt. Former Met president Daniel Weiss said he expects the Neue to retain key features such as its operations and endowment, while acknowledging that staffing and policy alignment may be required.

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