Beleaguered art dealer Johann König will close the Vienna outpost of his König Galerie at the end of this month in the wake of allegations by ten different women that he behaved in a sexually inappropriate manner with them. News of the shuttering, which will follow the planned October 30 closing of an exhibition of work by Alicja Kwade currently on view, was initially reported in Austrian daily Der Standard, with Artnews first publishing the story in the US.
The gallery has been open for a year; German daily Der Tagesspiegel notes that König described himself as having been “torn” between Berlin and Vienna at the time that he established his first gallery twenty years ago. The dealer ultimately chose the German metropolis as the home of his flagship gallery, but last year opened branches first in Seoul and then in Vienna. König is now pitching the Austrian venue as a “pop-up” effort intended to have a short life, though this was nowhere mentioned in the press releases heralding the gallery’s opening. The German paper noted that König was rumored to have been looking at a more prestigious address for the Vienna gallery before the misconduct allegations surfaced. Artnews reported that gallery representatives cast the Vienna space as similar to pop-ups König Galerie previously operated in Tokyo and Monaco, and revealed that another temporary space is planned for Mexico City. König’s Berlin and Seoul galleries are expected to remain open, as is the dealer’s London outpost.
König—the son of well-regarded curator Kasper König, who founded Frankfurt am Main’s Portikus contemporary art space and was a longtime director of the Museum Ludwig in Cologne—in August was disclosed by Die Zeit to have been accused of having groped, restrained, forcibly kissed, or made unwanted sexual comments to various women. He has vigorously denied the allegations.
