Farewell Party for Leopold Museum Director Peter Weinhäupl

25.06.2015

Farewell party celebrating 15 years at "ocean'sky" bar with a view over Vienna

Vienna – On Monday night (22nd June), the Managing Director of the Leopold Museum, Peter Weinhäupl, bid farewell to the Leopold Museum together with numerous guests of honor and the museum’s entire team. Weinhäupl had chosen the "ocean'sky" bar situated on the roof of the Haus des Meeres with its panoramic views over Vienna as the location for his party. He said that this was the sort of view he had in mind for the Leopold Museum in the shape of Laurids Ortner’s "Libelle” project, the planned rooftop extension of the museum in the MuseumsQuartier.

Weinhäupl has worked side by side with Prof. Rudolf Leopold and Elisabeth Leopold, and for 15 years has exerted a decisive influence on the museum.

Since its opening in 2001, the Leopold Museum has been a major hub in Vienna’s cultural landscape. The museum is home to the largest and most eminent Egon Schiele collection in the world and also houses chief works by Gustav Klimt and from Viennese art around 1900. Along with ground-breaking presentations of the collection, some 70 special exhibitions – especially on the art of the 19th and 20th centuries – have since attracted more than 5 million visitors to the Leopold Museum. Highlights included the exhibition of French Impressionist works from the Musée d’Orsay, on Francisco de Goya, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, "Schiele Landscapes", "The Naked Truth", Kolo Moser, "Edvard Munch and the Uncanny", “Klimt. Up Close and Personal”, “naked men”, on Oskar Kokoschka and Alberto Giacometti all the way to the current Tracey Emin exhibition. Presentations of masterpieces by Schiele and his contemporaries saw the museum’s collection travel to Oslo, Hamburg, Athens, Milan, Budapest and Zurich. The London Times has ranked the museum among the best 50 art museums in the world.

The team of the Leopold Museum presented Director Weinhäupl, called simply "PW" by his friends, with a whole host of gifts, including an iconic “PW portrait”, created especially for this occasion by the cartoonist and writer Tex Rubinowitz, a chronicle of the Weinhäupl era, a “15 years of PW” poster showing all exhibition posters to date, as well as a “PW beer” produced by the brewery Wolfsbräu. Elisabeth Leopold dedicated a poem to Peter Weinhäupl about art as a unifying bond.

Peter Weinhäupl, in turn, insisted on presenting Elisabeth Leopold and the chairman of the board of directors of the Leopold Museum SC Helmut Moser with a portfolio of, in terms of the history of architecture, valuable original design drawings of the museum building created by the celebrated architect Laurids Ortner. Franz Smola, the interim Museological Director of the Leopold Museum, cordially thanked his fellow director for this latest addition to the collection.

Attending the farewell party for Peter Weinhäupl were the director of the MQ Christian Strasser, the director of the mumok Karola Kraus, the architect Laurids Ortner, the designated directors of the Leopold Museum Hans-Peter Wipplinger and Gabriele Langer, Leopold Museum board member Wolfgang Nolz, Waltraud Leopold, Paul Frey (managing director of the KHM), the media manager Reinhold Gmeinbauer (Alba Communications), the publisher Nikolaus Brandstätter, Kunsttrans managing director Birgit Vikas, Soundproduction manager Volkmar Theil, Barbara Grötschnig (Vienna Insurance Group), the cultural manager Michael Franz, Klimt Foundation managing director Sandra Tretter, HS-Art managing director Siegfried Schöffauer, the architects Markus Spiegelfeld and Christian Weinhäupl, head of marketing and communication of the MQ Michael Duscher and Julia Schützenhofer (head of administration of the MQ), the two former chairmen of the Leopold Museum Private Foundation RA Martin Eder and Prof. Alfons Huber (chairman of the association “Friends of the Leopold Museum”), the president of the association “Friends of the Leopold Museum” Hans Raumauf, the managing director of the association “Friends of the Leopold Museum” Gabriele Röder and the association’s board members Prof. Fritz Koreny, Felicitas Schreier and Volker Anlauf, Klimt Foundation chairman Hubert Weinhäupl and naturally almost the entire team of the Leopold Museum:

From the commercial department: Tina Zelenka (marketing), Klaus Pokorny and Anna Suette (press & PR), Michael Terler (facility management), Anita Götz-Winkler (art education), Miriam Wirges (events) – who was pulling all the strings that evening – Regina Beran-Prem (tourism marketing), the graphic designers Nina Haider and Alexandra Ludwig, Patricia Spiegelfeld (sponsoring), Christine Kociu (marketing assistant), the team in charge of the museum’s shop Isabella Stoifl, Ulrike Koeberl and Consuella Kunz as well as the shop employees Andrea Macic, Ana Esperanza García Priego Sophia Roussou and Silas Pross, Brigitte Waclavicek (secretary’s office), Stephan Neuhaus (IT), Katarina Pabst (accounting), Walter Bohak (supervision coordination), the in-house technicians Christian Dworzack and Wolfgang Benes, Michaela Kühr (cash desk), Wolfgang Riedl (supervisor Siwacht) as well as the art educators Emmi Franke, Angelika Katzlberger, Alexandra Matzner, Marco Ricci, Markus Schön and many others.

From the museological department: Stephan Pumberger (head of the Egon Schiele Documentation Center), Birgit Summerauer, Chiara Galbusera, Lena Scholz and Stefan Kutzenberger (research assistants), the registrars Nicola Mayr and Else Prünster, the art restorers Monika Sadek-Rosshap, Violetta Miller and Stephanie Strachwitz, Daniela Kumhala (image rights), LM provenance researcher Robert Holzbauer, as well as the joint provenance researchers of the Austrian federal government and the Leopold Museum Sonja Niederacher and Michael Wladika.

The live music was provided by the group "Nebenzimmer Sessions", who improvised jazzy tunes interspersed with beats and electronic influences.

Back