The 2007 decision by Herbert and Rita Batliner to turn their collection over to the public, along with their choice of the Albertina Museum as a partner, enriched the museum landscape in a lasting way for contemporary art, too. Beginning at the turn of the millennium onward the Batliners began collecting the diverse painted output of the present era: Georg Baselitz, Anselm Kiefer, Alex Katz, Imi Knoebel, and Arnulf Rainer. In contemporary art, after all, it is great individual personalities who have taken the place of the various isms and movements that characterized modernism. These fascinating contemporary works are now being presented in their own exhibition hall for the first time.