Klimt paintings a hot attraction

WILL there be lines of people snaking down 86th Street and Fifth Avenue in New York for the next two months?

“Probably,” says Scott Gutterman, deputy director of the Neue Galerie, the museum housed in a converted 1914 mansion at the convergence of those thoroughfares.

Definitely, says New York art dealer Richard L. Feigen, who expects “a mob scene.”

The reason? The Neue Galerie is where Gustav Klimt’s portrait “Adele Bloch-Bauer I” and four other works by the early 20th century Austrian painter will be on display through Sept. 18. The gold-adorned 1907 oil for which cosmetics magnate and Neue Galerie co-founder Ronald S. Lauder recently paid $135 million received so much publicity that “it made Klimt a household name,” says Feigen. And the gallery where the five paintings are hanging holds only 80 viewers at a time.

A hint of what may be in store comes from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where the paintings were on view from April through June.

When the record amount Lauder had paid was reported, LACMA saw a drastic spike in attendance, according to spokeswoman Heidi Simonian.

“We had lines around the corner like at Disneyland,” she says. On its last day, the exhibition attracted more than 7,500 people, a record for the show. LACMA limited the Klimt gallery capacity to 70 to 75 viewers.

In New York, “we’ll form an orderly line outside if we exceed capacity,” says Gutterman.

Actually, there will be two lines, one for members and one for the public, who can join for $275.

In addition, the museum is offering a special viewing on Wednesdays, when it’s typically closed, from noon till 4 p.m. That’s free to members and $50 for others instead of the usual $15. Tickets for any day must be bought on site; there are no reservations, timed tickets or advance sales.

The Bloch-Bauer paintings, looted by the Nazis in 1938 and exhibited for decades in Vienna’s Belvedere museum, were restituted in January to Maria Altmann of West Los Angeles and other heirs after a court fight with the Austrian government. Adele Bloch-Bauer was a Viennese art patron and wife of Jewish sugar magnate Ferdinand; she may also have been Klimt’s mistress.

The golden portrait will be part of the Neue Galerie’s permanent collection once the exhibition closes. At a media preview Wednesday, Gutterman declined to say whether plans were afoot to buy any of the paintings to hang permanently with it.

But the same day, arts journalist Lee Rosenbaum wrote on her blog, CultureGrrl, that Lauder had told her, “We are contemplating these paintings. Ideally, I would like to acquire all of them. It depends on what the heirs want to do.”