Leopold Museum, Vienna: Curated Picks

Vienna’s Leopold Museum celebrates what many critics consider the city’s golden age of art—the first half of the 20th century in the wake of Sigmund Freud’s psychological claims. The museum boasts over 6,000 works from this period that covers Expressionism, Modernism, and Neue Sachlichkeit. The museum stems from the collection of Rudolf and Elisabeth Leopold who, in the 1950s, were bold connoisseurs of artists seen as vulgar and controversial like Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele. In recent years, the museum has faced lawsuits from heirs of families whose artwork was stolen by Nazis and eventually sold to the Leopold. The museum has dolled out tens of millions of dollars in order to both keep some of their most prized works while simultaneously partly correcting for these robberies.