VIENNA.- “WOW!” – the well-received exhibition held in 2018 at Vienna's Leopold Museum – revealed for the first time to the wider public a comprehensive but relatively little-known private collection. Its instigator, Austrian art collector Heidi Goëss-Horten, now has another surprise up her sleeve: the collector has acquired the Stöcklgebäude (annex building) of the Hanuschhof in the heart of Vienna's city center for the purpose of making her spectacular art collection permanently accessible. In choosing Vienna to house the collection, Heidi Goëss-Horton has returned to her roots.

The timeline for the opening of the new private museum will be challenging. Boasting 2,000 square meters, two floors, and the inner courtyard, the museum will feature changing exhibitions from the collection’s highlights. Later this fall, three select architectural firms will submit proposals for the renovation, which will commence immediately once the chosen project has been confirmed. The opening of the museum is slated for the beginning of 2022.

In 2018 Heidi Goëss-Horten first introduced the public to highlights of her more than 500-plus collection of works with the exhibition "WOW! The Heidi Horten Collection" at the Leopold Museum. The extraordinary success of the show, curated by Agnes Husslein-Arco, offered visitors a foray into 20th-century Western art history. With one-day-a-week free admission and free educational programs, the show attracted a record 360,000 visitors to the museum – thus prompting Heidi Goëss-Horten to vow to make permanently accessible a large portion of the art she currently surrounds herself with daily.

Heidi Goëss-Horten explains:“The first public presentation of my collection showed that there is clearly a great interest and curiosity in experiencing art. My most important goal is to engage young people with art; therefore, I decided to preserve my collection by exhibiting it and making it tangible for future generations.”

According to Agnes Husslein-Arco, advisor:"In a world of collecting often dominated by men, she is the rare woman to amass such a private collection and found a museum. Furthermore, there are few such private collections in Vienna and in Austria open to the public, thus Heidi Goëss-Horten's commitment is to be doubly lauded.”

With the revival of the Stöcklgebäude as a private museum, Vienna can look forward to yet another outstanding art hot spot.

The collection, carefully compiled since the early 1990s by Austrian art patron Heidi Goëss-Horten, has as its core focus works of the highest caliber in international Modernism, Neo-Expressionism, and American Pop-Art; it is one of the leading and most comprehensive private art collections in Europe today.

The Heidi Horten Collection features some 500 works by artists of distinguished international standing. The collection offers an exemplary cross-section of international art history from classical Modernism to the present, with the following focal points: German Expressionism, with masterpieces by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Erich Heckel, Emil Nolde, and Max Pechstein; abstract art, with bodies of work from such luminaries as Cy Twombly, Mark Rothko, and Ernst Wilhelm Nay; and American Pop Art, including works by Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Roy Lichtenstein. The international character of the collection is further underpinned with important works by Marc Chagall, Georg Baselitz, Francis Bacon, Fernand Leger, Gerhard Richter, Yves Klein, Lucio Fontana, and Damien Hirst.