Farewell interview

“Art is only as topical as it is relevant”

(Bild: Albertina / C. Mavric)

General Director Klaus Albrecht Schröder is retiring after 25 years at the Albertina. He looks back on proud, important and funny moments and would like to (continue to) look after collections in the future.

At its core, the Albertina is a graphic art collection. How important is the medium of graphics today? 
 The Albertina is no longer a graphic art collection, it has a graphic art collection. That is the decisive difference. The isolation of drawing no longer makes sense. The concept of drawing has changed as much as the concept of art as a whole since 1960.

Today it is pointless to differentiate between media, techniques, image carriers: on paper, on canvas, in plastic, on celluloid. It was therefore the right decision to lift this quarantine. First in the presentation and then even in the collections, by diversifying the collections.

How much has the exhibition business changed during your time at the Albertina?
The museum world has really changed a lot in the last ten or fifteen years. This is mainly due to the mixing of society. You walk through Vienna and hear many languages at the same time. But it's not just tourists. Italians, English, French, Muslims, Christians and non-believers live here.

Minister Elisabeth Gehrer proposed Klaus Albrecht Schröder as Albertina director.

(Bild: Albertina)

The art canon, so narrowly tailored, not only from a Eurocentric point of view, not only in terms of gender, male and white, but also through the same socialization, through the same world view, has simply imploded.

The Eurocentric canon that allowed a Duke Albert of Saxony-Teschen to understand his collection as an encyclopedic image of art history has suddenly become obsolete. The art of America was missing, as was that of India, China, South Africa and all the other countries.

Today we collect Aboriginal art and I have just received a significant collection of Aboriginal art paintings as a gift. The canon has changed dramatically in recent years. Mirroring this, other fields have died off.

Queen Sonja of Norway (between Margot Klestil-Löffler, Thomas Klestil and Klaus Albrecht Schröder) honored the newly renovated Albertina, which reopened in March 2003 with a major Edvard Munch exhibition.

(Bild: Albertina Wien )

Which areas would that be? 
 German art, Austrian Biedermeier, but also, with a few exceptions, the old masters. Today, old master museums, if they are not an exhibition machine like the Louvre or the Uffizi or the Prado, are also suffering from a dramatic decline in visitors. This art was tied to a world view that has abdicated. And art is only as topical as it is relevant.

The strategy against this? 

I am very pleased that I have refocused the Albertina on contemporary art in recent years and said that we have to open the door to the future. We now have 65,000 works of contemporary art. Nevertheless, our graphic art collection is fully integrated.

We are currently showing prints by Jim Dine, charcoal drawings by Robert Longo and drawings by Alfred Kubin. The graphic art collection has been given a display area that it never had before. It is a part of the Albertina, but it no longer shapes the Albertina's identity on its own.

Art on paper also has the problem of light sensitivity and is not suitable for permanent display. 

This has virtually forced me to adopt the new presentation doctrine of showing it together with other media. This also gave me the right to expand the collections. The hare was our heraldic animal at the beginning, but it is a work that we can only show every ten years. Nothing worse could happen.

Jane Fonda admires Abrecht Dürer's "Field Hare".

(Bild: Albertina Wien)

Klimt's "Kiss" is a picture with which you can activate a cash cow. You can't do that with a heraldic animal that you always lock away in the cellar.

You have set a new course for many things. What would you have liked to have done differently? 

I should have founded the Albertina Klosterneuburg five years earlier. The pandemic got in the way a little and it was also a bad decision on my part. We took over the building in 2017. Since then, our workshops and our central depot for contemporary art have been there. I would have liked to have put this museum on a stable track with the first two or three stations.

Now it is on the rails, but these stations have to be built first. My successor will certainly do that very well. I have left him an organ with large and small pipes on which he will be able to play excellently. Probably completely different music. But the organ is there. I would have liked to have installed this one large stop from Klosterneuburg earlier.

You have brought in numerous donations and art. To what extent? 

The collection has grown to a value of around two billion euros in this quarter of a century. The Batliner Collection was certainly the most important donation. Herbert Batliner was also the most important patron, because he provided essential help very early on. Before I started, the plan was only to build a study building and a depot, plus a 100 square meter exhibition space. The palace was not to be renovated, the façades not reconstructed and no new exhibition halls built.

Klaus Albrecht Schröder and Jane Fonda in front of a painting by Alex Katz.

(Bild: Albertina Wien)

Then Batliner gave me the money to build the Propter Homines Hall. Later there was further support from others, for the state rooms from Michael Kaufmann, for the Kahn Galleries, the Tietze Galleries, from Alfred Heinzel and many others. But Herbert Batliner was the first.

Just as he was the first to give us his classical modernism in 2007. A lot has been added since then, such as the Djerassi, Chobot, Forberg and Huber collections. The Essl Collection was the second major enrichment, perfectly expanding us with contemporary art, which, alongside Batliner, has made the Albertina something completely new.

The museum has an important architecture collection. But during her directorship, only one architecture exhibition was shown in two parts in the Albertina Palais. Why only this one? 
 I made the strategic, clear decision that the architecture collection at the Albertina must be preserved, researched, digitized and maintained. We are also in great demand as a lender. But it is not a pillar of the Albertina's profile.

It came into the collection via the collection of Philipp Freiherr von Stosch, although the similarities between a Rembrandt etching, the Hundert Gulden sheet, for example, and a sketch by Francesco Borromini of an idea for a building are ridiculous. It is also difficult to exhibit architecture, not particularly successful and not very topical.

Facts & Figures

Klaus Albrecht Schröder, born in Linz in 1955, studied art history and history in Vienna.

In 1985 he was the founding director of the Kunstforum in Vienna

From 1996 to 1999, he worked in the management of the Leopold Museum.

From 1999, Schröder was Director, and from 2017 General Director, of the Albertina, which he reopened in March 2003 after extensive renovation, modernization and expansion.

A total of 260 exhibitions were shown under his direction.

Since March 2003, the reopened palace has welcomed almost 17 million visitors.

What has been particularly successful? 
 That I was able to position the Albertina as a Janus-faced museum. That I was actually able to give this palace back its dignity as a place of remembrance of history, as an aristocratic palace, by buying back a lot of the original furniture. That I reconstructed the façades. That I removed the post-fascist balcony. That makes me incredibly proud.

Much prouder than 600,000 visitors to Van Gogh. Much prouder than a successful Keith Haring or Jean-Michel Basquiat exhibition. These are ephemeral events that will pass.

Klaus Albrecht Shröder on the roof of the Albertina with hare sculptures by Ottmar Hörl.

(Bild: Peter Korrak)

Van Gogh was the most successful exhibition? 
 Yes. 600,000 visitors in three months. Then Dürer and Michelangelo twice. They had over half a million. Then there were over 50 exhibitions with 300,000 to 350,000, but these are visitor numbers. It was important to me that I brought people to many other exhibitions. The opening year showed that, thanks to Munch and Dürer, we also drew the public to Baselitz and Brus.

What was the most disappointing exhibition? 
 There were two exhibitions that I would rather not have done. I don't want to name them. The exhibition that fell dramatically short of expectations was the Romanticism exhibition.

Distinguished visitor: Princess Marie von und zu Lichtenstein with Klaus Albrecht Schröder

(Bild: Albertina Wien)

Special encounters in the house that were surprising, particularly beautiful? 
 I could say the moment when Sharon Stone or Keanu Reeves or Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt were there. But then that's a secondary exploitation of a celebrity culture that doesn't correspond to the truth at all. The truth is when Gerhard Richter suddenly stands in front of you unannounced. Because he comes to see his paintings once a year and wants to have some peace and quiet.

Your funniest experience? 
 Definitely the story with Beyoncé. Radio Kronehit was to blame. Beyoncé had a concert in Vienna. I didn't know her. In short, my press officer says Beyoncé is coming, will I say hello? I ask, who is that? A superstar. Okay, I go downstairs. Downstairs, the stretch limousine pulls up. Beyoncé gets out. Two bars of bodyguards around her. Plus two school classes, the boys beside themselves when they see her. I walk with her through the "Monet to Picasso" exhibition. She's wearing sunglasses and can't open her mouth. Then I say goodbye, case closed.

But Kronehit has had a bit of fun and ordered a double. In the FAZ and Spiegel, you could read everywhere that the general director of the Albertina doesn't recognize Beyoncé.

Are you retiring as director of the Albertina at the end of the year? And then? 
 I would like to continue to look after some of the collections or take care of new ones. I would perhaps like to contribute my experience and knowledge to the change management of a company that is in a deep crisis. Whether that's in the cultural sector or in the private sector remains to be seen.

Shortly after the reopening: Klaus Albrecht Schröder at a strategy meeting with his press spokesman at the time.

(Bild: © Alexander Ch. Wulz / Albertina Wien)

And perhaps I will also become, hopefully a very upmarket, travel guide for people who would like to see great works of art, cities, museums, buildings such as Worms Cathedral or Aachen Minster through my eyes. Because I am said to have certain rhetorical qualities that make it interesting to listen to me.

So you really don't want to take over another institution? 
 No, the Albertina is not followed by the Rieder Heimathaus.

But that would be original, wouldn't it? 
 Yes, if I had to choose a museum, it would be the Nolde Museum, because there are 20,000 sheep there.