Image: Neue Galerie, New York
Neue Galerie New York has announced that its collection of Wiener Werkstätte postcards has grown by more than 1,000 examples thanks to the generosity of Leonard A. Lauder. The museum says the gift permanently adds to a collection that already held over 1,000 postcards from the Vienna-based workshop, strengthening one of its key holdings in early 20th-century graphic design.
The postcards were produced by the Wiener Werkstätte, founded in 1903 by architect Josef Hoffmann and designer Koloman Moser. Beginning in 1907, the workshop published a numbered postcard series that capitalized on the postcard’s popularity as a relatively new international communications medium. The firm promoted the cards as small works of art that could carry a brief message, and even marketed frames for display. Although millions were printed, the museum notes that the postcards are now highly collectible, with some motifs considered exceedingly rare.
According to Neue Galerie, the cards are an important part of the Wiener Werkstätte’s broader program. Their subjects reflect the range of the workshop’s visual language: holiday imagery, including Christmas and Easter motifs; fashion, both contemporary and historical; humorous scenes; and favorite tourist sites of the period. The collection includes work by major designers associated with the firm, among them Josef Hoffmann, Oskar Kokoschka, Dagobert Peche, and Egon Schiele, alongside artists such as Moriz Jung, Rudolf Kalvach, Mela Koehler, and Maria Likarz.
The museum’s announcement also places the gift within the context of its earlier scholarship and display history. In 2010, Neue Galerie presented ‘Postcards of the Wiener Werkstätte: Selections from the Leonard A. Lauder Collection,’ described by the museum as the first major museum exhibition in the United States devoted exclusively to Wiener Werkstätte postcards. The exhibition was accompanied by ‘Postcards of the Wiener Werkstätte: A Catalogue Raisonné,’ edited by Elisabeth Schmuttermeier and Christian Witt-Dörring, which the museum says remains available through its Book Store.
The postcard gift will return to prominence in Neue Galerie’s forthcoming ‘25th Anniversary Exhibition,’ scheduled to open in Autumn 2026. The museum says the anniversary exhibition will include a number of Wiener Werkstätte postcards to spotlight the landmark gift. The exhibition is organized in conjunction with the 25th anniversary of the museum’s founding in 2001 and will fill the entirety of the Neue Galerie’s landmark building.
Neue Galerie also said that selected loans from its collection are currently supporting ‘Modernity and Opulence: Women of the Wiener Werkstätte’ at the Jewish Museum, where a selection of Wiener Werkstätte postcards by female artists represented in the Leonard A. Lauder collection is on view. The museum’s announcement links the postcard gift to its ongoing collection, publishing, and lending activity around the Wiener Werkstätte, a field in which it has built substantial depth over more than a decade of exhibitions and related projects.
