A remarkable morning. . .

Our book club recently read "The Lady In Gold"by Anne Marie O'Connor, the story of the famous painting by Gustav Klimt of Adele Bloch-Bauer, a wealthy socialite in Vienna, Austria in the early 1900's, that was stolen by the Nazis in their plundering of all art owned by Jewish families during the pre-war period. The painting was renamed "The Lady in Gold" because Hitler did not want anyone to know that this remarkable protrait was that of a Jewish woman.

Long after the war, and after many years of negotiating with the Austrian government, the painting was finally returned to Block-Bauer's grand-daughter, Marie Altmann, now in her 90's and living in the United States. Altmann believed that the painting belonged in a museum and it currently hangs in the Neue Galerie on Fifth Avenue & 85th Street in New York City.

I tell you this because I recently spent four days in Connecticut visiting a childhood friend of mine and I was determined to get into the city and see the famous painting in person, along with an exhibition of .the art of the burgeoning Modernists of the 1930's that Hitler called "Entartete Kunst ". . . ."Degenerate Art".

I felt very adventurous as I took the train by myself from Stamford into NYC's Grand Central Station early last Thursday morning. As we rolled through Mt. Vernon, the city in Westchester County where I grew up, I flashed on the many mornings I took this very train to my job as the assistant editor in a publishing firm. I was in my early 20's then. If you haven't noticed, I am slightly older now.

The entire exhibit was absolutely wonderful. Starting with the magnificent life size portrait of Bloch-
Bauer that dominates an entire wall. Equally fascinating was the "Degenerate Art" exhibition by artists like Paul Klee, Egon Schiele, Oskar Kokoschka and Marcel Breuer. The current exhibit only runs through June 30th, but if you are in the city before then, I highly recommend it. Housed in a circa 1914 mansion, I found it totally fascinating and I think you will as well.
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Photo captions: (1) "Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer - The Lady In Gold"
(2) Neue Galerie's brochure on the "Degenerate Art" exhibit