Rebuilding a Collection: 20 years of working with palaces, paintings, sculpture, furniture and porcelain

Dr. Johann Kräftner, Director, Liechtenstein, The Princely Collections

For the collections of the Prince of Liechtenstein, the events surrounding World War II brought drastic changes. 80 % of the princely assets had been lost through the confiscation of the estates in the Czech Republic and a return of the artworks to Vienna after they had been evacuated to Vaduz was out of the question.

It was necessary to ensure the family’s financial survival through the sale of works of art. Only after the now reigning Prince Hans-Adam II had achieved to reorganise the financial basis in the 1970s, it was possible to stop selling works of art and to make a new start.

The first major sign of life was the exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum in New York in 1985/86. A second significant step was taken with the restoration of the summer palace in the Rossau quarter and the opening of the Liechtenstein Museum in 2004, followed by the restoration of the city palace in the centre of Vienna, both now presenting substantial parts of the Princely Collections.