Vienna's Leopold Museum is celebrating its 25th anniversary with a milestone that fits the occasion: 25 paintings by Gustav Klimt are now on permanent view. The latest addition is "Lady en face with Pleated Blouse" (1898), an elegant portrait on new loan from the Klimt Foundation, which visitors can find in the permanent presentation "Vienna 1900. Birth of Modernism".

Museum director Hans-Peter Wipplinger says the museum now holds the most extensive permanent presentation of Klimt's paintings anywhere in the world. The 25 canvases are joined by around 130 drawings and more than 300 archival items, most of them permanent loans from Klimt's direct descendants. The Klimt display anchors the museum's wider claim to the world's most comprehensive presentations of the three giants of Viennese Modernism — Klimt, Egon Schiele and Oskar Kokoschka.

The numbers tell a story of a young institution built around one man's obsession. Rudolf Leopold, who began collecting in the 1950s, brought his 5,200 works into a private foundation in 1994, and the museum building opened in 2001. Twenty-five years later, the holdings have grown to nearly 9,000 works, and more than nine million people have visited. The Schiele collection remains the largest in the world — 300 works, including 48 paintings — while 17 Kokoschka paintings form the largest permanent display of his work anywhere.

The anniversary presentation underscores how the museum has kept expanding through donations and patron-sponsored purchases, with recent acquisitions adding works by artists from Marie Egner to Paula Modersohn-Becker.

Opened in 2001 on the MuseumsQuartier site, the museum remains by far the most visited institution in the quarter, and its anniversary programme continues through the winter with the new display of acquisitions at Belvedere 21 and a photography exhibition on New Objectivity scheduled to open in November.