Arnold Schoenberg Center

Arnold Schönberg’s estate remained in the property of his family following his death in 1951, and was maintained by his widow Gertrud Schönberg until 1964.In the 1970s, his heirs opted to donate the collection to the Arnold Schoenberg Institute, which was formed in 1973 at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles and housed an archive that was open to the public until 1997.The institute’s initial director was Leonard Stein, a Schoenberg pupil.

When the University of Southern California’s provision that the institute and archive should refer to the person Arnold Schönberg in research and teaching was no longer met in the 1990s, a legal conflict with the heirs erupted in 1996.Cities, universities, and private people in New York, Vienna, Berlin, The Hague, Basel, Yale, Stanford, Harvard, Arizona, and the Getty Center in Los Angeles, as well as the University of California at Los Angeles, have made an effort to buy the collection.The mansion was eventually relocated to Vienna, Schönberg’s hometown and the birthplace and namesake of the Second Viennese School.The Arnold Schönberg Center Private Foundation was established in early 1997 by the City of Vienna and the International Schönberg Society.The initial capital was ATS 8 million, and the City of Vienna and the Republic of Austria additionally guaranteed an unrestricted yearly subsidy of ATS 10.2 million to support continued operations (value secured).The archive was believed to be worth 700 million schillings at the time.Simultaneously, the board of directors named cultural manager Christian Meyeras founding director.He held this post until 2015, during which time he and his colleagues created the ASC as a reference point for interactions and debates with Arnold Schönberg and the Vienna School’s work and impact.Angelika Möser, a musicologist, has been in charge of the institution since July 2015.

The foundation’s goals include establishing the Arnold Schönberg Archives (legacy), preserving and caring for it, educating the general public about Schönberg’s interdisciplinary artistic influence, and teaching and disseminating Schönberg’s contributions to music and his other life’s work.The foundation’s goals include, among other things, providing access to and availability of the Schönberg estate for scientific studies and research, organizing regular exhibitions, concerts, and other events, holding symposia and conferences, and exhibiting paintings and drawings by Arnold Schönberg that were made available to the foundation as long-term loans by their owners.

Arnold Schönberg’s estate was included into the UNESCO Memory of the World Register in May 2011. On August 12, 2015, a fire broke out in the Palais Fanto’s top dome. The extinguishing water caused damage to the Arnold Schönberg Center’s premises. The exhibition rooms and library had to be shuttered temporarily for renovations.