Neue Galerie New York — Attraction in New York

A wonderful collection of Austrian and German art and high-end crafts. There are both permanent exhibition, as well as temporary ones (I was informed these last usually 3-4 months) with work loaned from other museums, institutions, and private collections.

(Please note that No Photography is allowed at any time for any work and interior shots. The only place allowed is at the Basement near the restrooms, where they have a replica of the famous Klimt painting “Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer. Please make sure of this, because if you take photo of your friend or yourself even in the hallway and a staff catches this, you will be admonished.)

Gallery monitor staff are all friendly and informative, as are the Bookstore staff. (The 4-Star rating is due to the disorganization of the entry process.)

The Bookstore alone is a haven for art lovers. With traditional bookstores disappearing from our life, it is magnificent to have a small shop filled with coffee table Art & Architecture books and general books on Art History.

(If you do not wish to see artwork and intend only to visit the Café and/or Bookstore, you can do so without a ticket. Check hours for opening. Café opens before the Gallery opens, and Bookstore opens at 11AM until 6PM.)

Tip: If it rains hard, you happen to arrive before the gallery opens and have to wait in the rain, just tell the Guard that you intend to go to the Café (and make sure you do go to the Café!) as it will allow immediate entry, ahead of the gallery visitors. Believe me, it would save you a lot of trouble. The cost of an iced tea or a cup of coffee will be well worth it than standing outside in the chaos like what I experienced today.)

Now, shall I share with you about the organization of the entry process? This refers of course only to my visit that day and hopefully will not be repeated at any other day.

Arriving 15-minutes prior to opening on a Saturday morning with hard rain, we were made to wait outside. At least on that day, the Gallery did not have a rule in place, i.e., separation of queue lines between ticket holders and non-ticket holders. As a result, people who came after a long line had formed were told to wait on a new line. Then the guard himself got confused when the two lines were comprised of both ticket holders and non-ticketed people. More confusion as the door opened for business, people from the second line tried to cut in the original queue of people. Entry was limited to two people at a time, due to bag check, umbrella check (handed to guard to be sheathed in plastic,) and phone surrender (which the guard never passed to owner, so please make sure to get your belongings back.

The Gallery should place a simple sign that let people know where to stand. The guards need to be informed of this, too. One guard really sowed confusion and caused unfairness for people who had come earlier and had to change line to stand behind people who came much later. Even standing at number 2 in line, I was not immune to this chaos.

Once inside for bag check, a guard kept telling me to stand away from the examination table as he was processing person #1. But doing so would make me stand and block the door, and that’s exactly what happened. Another guard asked me to stay away from the door, which pushed me back to the first guard’s zone. Serenity now. Haha.

Please have a lovely time at...

The priciest museum ticket anywhere in the world; -$28.00 add on top of it that there are only like five original paintings in the whole museum with the rest being framed prints of other museums' art work ( I am not making this up!) it certainly means that per painting, you are paying $5.00 to lay eyes on just one painting. Security is absurd and it felt like you were dealing with a bar bouncer at the entrance -the guy was condescending and with dictatorial tendencies - you needed to stay behind an imaginary line at the entrance which was in conflict with where my own imaginary line would have been if i were to impose one- they wouldn't allow more than two-three people in the hall inside where you bought tickets. They made an elderly woman go around and around the fixed railings to get " in line" behind a three person long line instead of telling her to just wait behind us. So even though it was fairly empty you had to wait outside before they allowed you to get a ticket inside. They emptied the guests' water bottles while the Met allows you to carry them full, - i guess the adele painting is more valuable than all the Rembrandts and Ver Meers and Van Goghs and Picassos and a million other ones at the met, ( but honestly any environmentalist could have hidden their soup in their bodies because thankfully we weren't strip searched!). I read other reviews saying that part of museum was closed for whatever reasons, not in this visit however - sadly this is not an excuse the museum could use this time -nothing was closed and all seemed so small and worthless- they actually claimed to have a Klimt landscape exhibit on view but again most of the supposed art work was framed prints of originals from other museums. There was one landscape on loan from the Harvard museum that i could tell. Ah also the hype is uber high about some obscure pretentious restaurant onsite with a german english bilingual menu that sounds a lot like the menu of belvedere museum in vienna ( or for that matter any street cafe in Vienna) at least as far as desserts go. There was at least a 30 -45 min line outside for an addition 15-30 minute wait in the line inside, for anyone with copious amounts of time in their hands but for whom this restaurant was a must to feed themselves from. The restaurant line was definitely mostly young people while the museum guests seemed mostly in their 8th decade of their life. Visiting the Met and then following up with this museum felt a total waste of time and money. My super short time in this museum would have been better spent and considerably more fulfilling visiting a small corner of the Met instead. Skip this and visit and spend all of your time at the Met MOMA or Guggenheim and if you are into " small, private, niche" or whatever snob or elitist keyword applied to this place seems tempting to you, then visit the Frick collection. It will be exponentially...

Security checks: For us as Austrians and Viennese residents the Neue Galerie was on our must-see list of NYC museums. Sadly, this has been the most disappointing museum visit we have ever experienced. Upon entering the museum our bags were checked and we were told our water and juice bottles were not allowed in the museum. Instead of offering us the possibility to pick them up on our way out we had to throw two juice bottles and one perfectly sealed water bottle into the garbage. Would it have been too much to ask to store the bottles in a corner or on a shelf during our (very) short visit?

Admission: After that we were told that only one gallery was open and admissions were on a donation-basis. Had we known that one gallery meant only one single, very small room we would have reconsidered the amount of our donation. For visitors who do not have the luxury to visit the museum at any time and want to make the most of the city, it would have been nice if this information had been posted on their website, so that visitors from abroad can make up their mind if it is worth visiting or not.

Coat check: Upon making our way up the stairs, I was suddenly stopped and asked in an unfriendly manner to check in my backpack at the coat check. I would not have minded checking in my backpack, however, considering that it is such a small and flat bag, which had already been checked at security, I honestly felt treated like a criminal. Both the security officer and the lady at the desk had failed to mention before that I needed to check in my bag. This of course begs the question why we were forced to throw away our juice and water bottles if you have to check in a small backpack anyway and we could have left the bottles in our bag? I hadn't even experienced such drastic and harsh security measures during museum visits in the wake of the 2005 London bombings.

Gallery: Klimt's paintings are of course exceptional masterpieces and we are very sad that the museum failed to provide the necessary surroundings that would do these paintings justice. The lighting in general was really bad and since standing at close proximity to the paintings is understandably not possible, the experience was further ruined. While I do understand that photography with flash is not permitted, taking photos in general was not allowed.

Exit: After our short-lived visit (ca. 10min) we left the building and thought we might pick up our drinks from the rubbish but they had already emptied the rubbish bin, even though it had been nearly empty...