The exterior of The Breuer Building, Sotheby's new home (from 2025) in New York. Photo: Max Touhey.
The building has been sold by the Whitney Museum of American Art to Sotheby's, which will take on the 945 Madison Avenue premises in September 2024, ready to open in 2025.
The Upper East Side location is in an area known as ‘museum mile’ due to the number of institutions that call it home.
The interior lobby of The Breuer Building in Manhattan. Photo: Max Touhey.
The Modernist (now considered Brutalist) building was designed by Hungarian-born architect Marcel Breuer and completed in 1966 to house the Whitney.
The Whitney left in 2015 and The Metropolitan Museum of Art moved in to create The Met Breuer. Then in 2021 The Frick Collection moved in temporarily, naming it Frick Madison. The Frick will move back to its permanent home on East 70th street once its renovation is complete.
The Breuer Building, facing Madison Avenue in New York. Photo: Max Touhey.
Sotheby’s said it will retain ownership of its current headquarters at 1334 York Avenue (which it has operated from since 1980) and will remain there until its new galleries open in the Breuer building.
Later this year, Sotheby’s will open Gantry Point in Long Island City, New York, a 240,000 sq ft facility which will house operational facilities for logistics and storage.
In the last few years, the firm has launched several galleries including in Palm Beach, Aspen, Los Angeles, Cologne, Monaco and Shanghai.
The auction house will also open new galleries in Hong Kong and Paris next year. In Asia it will run a 24,000 sq ft two-story space at Landmark Chater in Hong Kong and in Paris it will open at 83, rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré on the site of the Galerie Bernheim Jeune.
