Leopold Museum

Some museums draw you back time and again: I, for one, could not visit Madrid without returning to the Prado’s haunting Goyas or Paris without seeing Rodin’s sculptures. In Vienna it’s the Leopold that I cannot get enough of—in particular the Egon Schiele rooms, which feature more than forty paintings by the Austrian artist. Part of the MuseumsQuartier complex, the Leopold has the largest holding of Schiele’s works, which are displayed in soaring, airy spaces. As is unfortunately the case with several Vienna museums, there’s some controversy surrounding the legal origins of the collection. Rudolf Leopold, a doctor and patron of the arts, has been involved in several restitution lawsuits. This does not diminish the genius of Schiele, who was only twenty-eight when he died of Spanish flu in 1918, just three days after his pregnant wife succumbed to the same illness. One of the most touching images is a simple charcoal drawing entitled Edith Schiele Sterbend (Edith Schiele Dying), the artist’s last work. The rest of the Leopold is nothing to sniff at: other floors contain works by Klimt, like the powerful large-scale Death and Life; Kokoschka; Koloman Moser; and Richard Gerstl, among others. Closed Tuesday.