This is the building where the whole split began, and it looks exactly as it was meant to: a palace for art, with columns and statues, built back when Vienna was laying out its Ringstraße, the grand boulevard that rings the old city.
For decades the association based here decided what the city got to see, who was allowed to exhibit, and what was sold. That last part is what bothered the younger members most, because the shows revolved around sellable paintings for a middle-class crowd, and foreign art barely got a look in.
In the spring of 1897 nineteen of them walked out, with the painter Gustav Klimt leading the way, and the funny thing is that they had neither formally won nor lost the argument: they left before it ever came to a vote.
Both houses are still standing, five hundred metres apart, and both of them still put on exhibitions today.
Right next door sits the concert hall where that same battle played itself out in music.
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