Grande Dame turned 98

Art collector Elisabeth Leopold dies

Art collector Elisabeth Leopold has died at the age of 98.

(Bild: APA/HANS KLAUS TECHT)

The art collector Elisabeth Leopold is dead. The grande dame of the local art world died on Tuesday evening at the age of 98, her family and the Leopold Museum announced on Wednesday. 

Alongside her husband Rudolf, who died in 2010, she had built up one of the most important collections of Viennese modern art, which has been on display at the Leopold Museum since 2001.

A life for art
Elisabeth Leopold was born in Vienna-Hernals in 1926. While studying medicine at the University of Vienna, the future ophthalmologist met Rudolf Leopold, whom she married in 1953.

Elisabeth Leopold was the grande dame of the local art scene.

(Bild: APA/HERBERT NEUBAUER)

The unique collection she had tirelessly amassed was transferred to the Leopold Museum Private Foundation in 1994 - in return for the assurance that the Republic would build a museum for the collection. Since the death of her husband, Elisabeth Leopold, who was awarded both the Austrian Cross of Honor for Science and Art First Class and the Golden Medal of Merit of the Province of Vienna in 2017, has been a life member of the board of the private foundation. She has repeatedly acted as co-curator in the exhibition house itself.

"Center of the family"
"At the same time, she was the center of the family throughout her life, she guaranteed the cohesion of the distinctive personalities in the Leopold family despite all the difficulties of a collector's house," the family wrote in the statement to the APA. 

And further: "Above all, however, she always supported her husband and his museum project and, even in old age, never tired of emphasizing his achievements and his knowledge of art, from which, as she said, she herself learned and passed on so much. She will be missed as an unmistakable, authentic personality in Austria's cultural life."