The Lentos Art Museum (German: Kunstmuseum Lentos) is a museum of modern art in Linz, Austria, which opened in May 2003 as the successor to the Neue Galerie der Stadt Linz (New Gallery of the City of Linz). The museum was designed by Zurich-based architectural firm Weber & Hofer. It is 130 m long and has approximately 8000 m2 of floor space. The building's transparent glass façade is illuminated at night. It is located directly on the Danube between the Nibelungen Bridge and Brucknerhaus.

History

One hundred twenty important art works from the collection of the Berlin art dealer Wolfgang Gurlitt (1888–1965), including paintings and graphic works by Klimt, Schiele, Kokoschka, Nolde, Corinth and Pechstein, became the foundation of the collection of the New Gallery of the City of Linz after World War II. Adding to these holdings, in 1953, Linz made the New Gallery a city museum with an active exhibition and acquisition programs. In 1998, the decision was made to build the Lentos Museum, which opened in May 2003. The museum presents significant themes and issues of contemporary art by displaying works of various schools of modern art from the Lentos collection and by exhibiting works of 20th century art on loan from other museums.

The collection

The museum collection includes around 1500 works from the areas of painting, sculpture and object art, over 10,000 works on paper, and about 850 photographs, including significant contributions to the development of artistic photography (A. Rodtschenko, Man Ray, H. Bayer). The earliest works among the museum's holdings are from the first half of the 19th century (C. D. Friedrich, J. B. Reiter). From the area of classical modernism the Lentos collection includes important paintings by Klimt, Schiele, Kokoschka, Corinth, and Pechstein. The collection also covers the inter-war period with works from German and Austrian Expressionism and Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity). The period after 1945 is exemplified with works and ensembles of international art, including paintings, sculptures and graphic works by Karel Appel, Ernst Wilhelm Nay, Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, Maria Lassnig, Gabriele Münter, Markus Lüpertz, Arnulf Rainer, Eduardo Chillida, Tony Cragg, Gottfried Helnwein, Sean Scully, Anthony Caro, Valie Export, Elke Krystufek, Ludwig Merwart, and others.

Internationality of the sculpture collection

The sculpture collection holdings are continuously expanded through active acquisition policies. Since May 2004 the Viennese curator, critic and journalist Stella Rollig has been the director of the Lentos Art museum. In addition to the existing collection, modern art and the most current trends in contemporary art are presented in changing exhibitions.

Nazi-looted art and provenance research

For the Lentos Museum of Art the legacy of the Gurlitt Collection is "as brilliant as it is problematic". Wolfgang Gurlitt, a close contact of the director of the Hitler Führermuseum, Hermann Voss, was investigated for Nazi art looting in 1946, along with other members of the Gurlitt family. Wolfgang Gurlitt's art collection, which the museum purchased in, included artworks that had been looted by Nazis from Jewish collectors. The museum undertook provenance research to establish the origins and ownership history of the collection and the city of Linz created a dedicated provenance working group in 2007. As of 2019, 64 works of art had been investigated, of which 13 paintings were found to have looted art. Artworks restituted to the families of the Jewish collectors plundered by the Nazis include: Not all the artworks have been verified yet and provenance research continues.