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On July 1st the Upper Belvedere reopened its doors to visitors. After the mathematical models assume an 80 percent decline in the tourist audience, one concentrates on local art lovers and promises “more space than ever” for the coming summer. In the Upper Belvedere, you will be tempted by a 4-euro online day ticket, easy hanging and new pictures.
“We hope that summer will be a good opportunity for Viennese to rediscover their palace and museum,” said Stella Rollig, director general of the Belvedere, on Monday. The three and a half months involuntary closing time was used well due to the measures against the Corona pandemic and “a good revision of the show collection was made”. This has “lost a little conclusiveness” through many loans. They also “hung more airily”, which was good for complying with the distance rules, improvements in the technical infrastructure as well as in the air conditioning technology and a new studio for art education.
After “The Bride”, two other Klimt paintings were taken on loan from the Klimt Foundation: “Freundinnen” (1907) and “Mädchen in Grün” (around 1898). There are also two new purchases financed from the proceeds of the fundraising dinner last year: “Vogelflug” (1951/52) by Erika Giovanna Klien and “Die Friedensengel” (1944) by Greta Freist Additional information about 120 plants is available via the free Smartify mobile app. In July the online ticket for the Upper Belvedere 4 costs 16 euros instead of the regular one. If you want to visit the eight federal museums with a BundesMuseenCard from 1 July to 15 September, you pay 19 euros instead of 59 euros.
The numbers that are calculated in the Belvedere for the medium-term future look bleak. In the Lower Belvedere, where the only federal museum that had recently been opened and that has consistently had fewer tourists than in the Upper Belvedere, since the reopening it has been around 60 percent below visitor forecasts. The Upper Belvedere, 90% of which is visited by tourists, is expected to suffer more losses. “We have to be prepared for very sensitive declines,” said economic director Wolfgang Bergmann.
In a parliamentary answer to the query, the expected loss of revenue in the Belvedere by the end of the year was given as 16.96 million euros. This is calculated from this year’s budget figures, in which revenues were calculated at EUR 23 million, and the decline forecasts of the tourism industry, explained Bergmann. Due to drastic savings in expenditure – according to Rollig, however, no staff will be fired, only redundancies and expiring contracts will not be replaced – it is believed that the deficit can be reduced to EUR 6.6 million. The necessary liquidity injections from the federal government will also be needed for a longer time. “We will not be able to return to normality until 2023 at the earliest,” says Bergmann, who would like to see the subject of basic compensation dealt with quite independently. It is about the inflation compensation that has not been paid for a long time, which must also come in the future.
However, the two future projects of the Belvedere will continue. In the planned Salzburg branch, however, the general director sees Salzburg’s governor Wilfried Haslauer (ÖVP) on the train, who has repeatedly committed to it. At the underground visitor center of the Upper Belvedere, they were shortly before the tender for the architecture competition, after which one would like to enter into further discussions with the subsidy providers. But postponed is not canceled. Because, according to Rollig: “There is a time after the crisis.”
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