Gestaltung der Ausstellung im Jüdischen Museum Wien

The exhibition tells the eventful life story of Stefan Edlis, who had to flee Vienna with his mother and siblings at the age of 16 and in the following decades became one of the most important international collectors of contemporary art in the USA.

Having become wealthy through his company Apollo Plastics, founded in 1965, he and his wife Gael Neeson built up a spectacular collection that did not shy away from provocative works of art. In the 2019 film The Price of Everything, Edlis recounts his dramatic escape to the US in connection with Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan's sculpture HIM - a kneeling figure of Hitler. Stefan Edlis died in Chicago in October 2019 at the age of 94. One of his last wishes was that his passport, issued in Vienna in 1941 and stamped J, be preserved in the Jewish Museum Vienna. His widowed mother's years-long efforts to save him and his siblings from Vienna to the USA made a last-minute escape possible. A publication accompanying the exhibition tells of Stefan Edlis' eventful life, which he always faced with unwavering optimism and humour, whether as a newcomer to New York, a soldier in the US Army in Iwo Jima, a dancer, a racing driver, an innovative entrepreneur or a great philanthropist. With the support of Gael Neeson, HIM will be presented in Austria for the first time as a highlight of the exhibition.

CURATOR Danielle Spera and Michaela Vocelka
ARCHITECTURE Margula Architects
TEAM Itai Margula, Anna Poell, Theresa Kraus and Theresa Margraf
GRAPHIC AND CATALOGE Fuhrer Wien
LOCATION Museum Dorotheergasse
DURATION of the Exhibition 13.04.2022 - 02.10.2022
DOWNLOAD Spatial Collage and the Viewers’ Gaze – An (Un)Pleasant Journey. The Life of Stefan Edlis after HIM
LINK Vol 4 No 2 (2022): The Role of Urban Imaginaries
FOTO Simon Veres