Max Hollein

Max Hollein (born 7 July 1969 in Vienna) is an Austrian art historian and the current CEO and Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

Hollein was born in Vienna in 1969 to architect Hans Hollein and Helene Hollein.

He studied art history at the University of Vienna and business administration at the Vienna University of Economics.

During this period, he also free-lanced for the business section of the national daily newspaper "Der Standard".

In 1995, following the successful completion of his studies with two master's degrees, one in art history and the other in business administration, he moved to New York City to take on the position of project director of exhibitions at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York.

From 1996 until the end of 2000, he worked closely with Guggenheim director Thomas Krens, initially as "Executive Assistant to the Director" and, from 1998 onward, as "Chief of Staff and Manager of European Relations" responsible for key projects such as the establishment of the exhibition halls "Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin" and "Guggenheim Las Vegas".

He was also involved in fundraising, travelling exhibitions, the inauguration activities at Guggenheim Bilbao as well as liaising with European cultural institutions, collectors, media, curators and sponsors.

From 2001 to 2016, Hollein was the director of the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt.

He repositioned the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt nationally as well as internationally through a highly popular yet challenging exhibition programme from classical to contemporary art mounting up to ten major shows per year.

The depth, quality and quantity of the programme has been accompanied by a significant increase in corporate funding.

Among the highlights of the programme have been exhibitions such as "Shopping: A Century of Art and Consumer Culture", "Henri Matisse: Drawing with Scissors", "Yves Klein", "The Naked Truth: Klimt, Egon Schiele, Kokoschka and Other Scandals", "Women Impressionists" and "Edvard Munch. The Modern Eye".

With projects such as "Playing the City 3" or "Street Art Brazil", he expanded his programming into urban spaces of Frankfurt.

At the Schirn, his frequent collaborator was noted art historian Olivier Berggruen.

In addition to his directorship at the Schirn, Hollein became the Director and CEO of the Städel Museum in 2006.

At the Städel Museum, Hollein introduced a wide spectrum of new exhibition formats.

Hollein realised major exhibitions on the Old Masters, including "Cranach the Elder", "The Master of Flémalle and Rogier van der Weyden", and "From Titian to Tiepolo", "Botticelli", and "Albrecht Dürer" and "Maniera", as well as significant retrospectives on modern masters such as Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Max Beckmann.

Under Hollein, special emphasis was also given to the development of the collection: between 2006 and 2012 more than 1,500 works were added to the collection, including previously underrepresented media such as photographs, and works by female artists.

He expanded the Städel its holdings of contemporary art and started organizing exhibitions on contemporary artists such as Piero Manzoni and, John Baldessari, or and "Georg Baselitz: The Heroes".

Under Hollein's directorship, from 2006 to 2016, the Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung underwent the greatest reorganisation of its infrastructure since 1990.

In 2007 Hollein advocated against the demolition of the Schirn Rotunda and instead initiated a commission series with contemporary artists like Barbara Kruger, Ayse Erkmen, Rosa Barba or Heather Phillipson to create site specific works at the rotunda.

The Art of Ancient Egypt and Antiquities, Middle Ages, Renaissance, Baroque to Neoclassicism as well as the "studioli" on the top floor of the museum villa were newly installed under his tenure and reopened in 2008 with an entirely new color and lighting concept.

Funding for this major renovation came to a large extent from private and corporate sources.

Exhibitions such as "Sahure – Death and Life of a Great Pharaoh", "Gods in Color ", "Franz Xaver Messerschmidt" were received with unprecedented attention.

"Gods in Color" underlines the museum's leading role in polychromy research and became a traveling exhibition with more than 20 venues, including the Ny Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek Copenhagen, Vatican Museums Rome, Archeological Museum Istanbul, Getty Villa Los Angeles, or Palacio de las Bellas Artes Mexico.

Of note was also the exhibition "Jeff Koons: The Sculptor", as part of the two-part survey together with the Schirn Kunsthalle.

In the presentation at the Liebieghaus, both world-renowned and new sculptural works by Koons entered into a dialogue with the historic building and its collection spanning 5,000 years of sculpture.

Its online and digital outreach has been significantly advanced and the Schirn publishes its own wide-reaching online magazine "Schirn Mag" since 2011.

In 2012 the Schirn had its best-attended year so far with a total of 479,121 visitors.

Among the most significant projects worthy of mention in this context was the major expansion of the Städel Museum completed in 2012 which doubled the institution's gallery space and created a new wing for the presentation of art since 1945.

Both the architecture as well as the significant collection development were hailed by the public and the media.

More than 50 percent of the 52 million euro construction costs were raised through private sources in an unprecedented fundraising campaign.

The Städel was honoured as "Museum of the Year 2012" by the German art critics association AICA in 2012.

In the same year, the museum recorded its highest ever attendance numbers, with 447,395 visitors.

2014, Hollein opened the Minishirn – a creative space for children.

To mark the 200th anniversary of the Städel in 2015, Hollein significantly expanded the museum's reach with the launch of new digital education formats, such as Art History Online and Café Deutschland

He served as Director and CEO of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco from July 2016, until April 2018, the Metropolitan Museum of Art announced that Hollein would become its 10th director.

Hollein oversaw both the de Young and the Legion of Honor museums, which together are the seventh most-visited art institutions in the United States, with 1.4 million visitors in 2016.

Hollein joined the Fine Arts Museums in July 2016 from his position as the director of Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, Städel Museum and the Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung.

By 2019, the Schirn had attracted more than 8.8 million visitors to over 240 exhibitions.

For many years now, the Schirn has been the most popular art institution in the Rhine-Main region.