It has been a long decade for Marcel Breuer’s museum building on the corner of Madison Avenue and East 75th Street. Originally built in 1966 as the third home of the Whitney, the institution decamped downtown to a new building designed by Renzo Piano Building Workshop in the Meatpacking District in 2015. From 2016 to 2021, the Breuer Building was taken over by The Met as a satellite location. Then it was the temporary home of works from The Frick during its yearslong renovation, which was an amazing aesthetic mashup. Sotheby’s purchased the building in 2023 for about $100 million and promptly hired Herzog & de Meuron with PBDW Architects for some nips and tucks. Sotheby’s has opened its auction season by stocking the Breuer Building, now its global headquarters, with a host of collections ready for bidding.
Breuer’s squat stack is as weird as ever, and it will stay that way: During this improvement process, the building was recognized as an Individual and Interior Landmark by the Landmarks Preservation Commission on May 20. This protection is limited to its exterior and 2-story lobby, which means that items like a new digital display screen and vitrines that sit on what were once benches are removable. In the basement, the expanse is hoarded over ahead of a Roman and Williams–designed restaurant opening next spring. Instead, a John Chamberlain sculpture is backed against the drywall like your next dodgeball victim.
Behind the check-in desk opposite the existing elevators, a new bronzed metal door conceals a reworked back-of-house, which includes a new freight elevator to avoid moving precious art (and VIPs) through the lobby. A nested, square Frank Stella hangs on the wall in front of a Jean Arp sculpture above the bluestone floors. Looking up, the famous grid of circular reflectors dotted with silvered bulbs remains, same as it ever was. Praise be!
Climate controls and lighting were updated throughout, and the rest was handled with a light touch. In person, Herzog & de Meuron partner Wim Walschap said its goal was to “preserve the building’s architectural integrity while adapting it for a dynamic future.” Via press materials, Jacques Herzog commented that “paradoxically, our strongest architectural contribution to this building was to remain quasi-invisible, as if everything had always been there.”
For casual visitors, things are largely the same despite the fact that the redo increases the exhibition area by 27 percent. Stair users will appreciate that Dwellings, the 1981 sculpture by Charles Simonds remains perched on a ledge, undisturbed, as if it was a house spirit. (Actually, it is on long-term loan from the Whitney.) Upstairs, the biggest change is on the fourth floor, a tall level that sports Breuer’s cyclopean eye window above Madison, which has been refinished. The act removes a prior strange detail: A trough in the bottom right corner waterslided window condensate into a little bucket. Sotheby’s plans for auctions to take place in front of the aperture, so its nearby gallery walls are movable as to be able to clear out space. Here, these were arranged so catch a diagonal glimpse of the trapezoidal opening as you exit the elevator.
A mezzanine for VIP auction attendees was added along the north side of the floor and is faced in one-way mirrored glass. The area, I was told, is still under construction, so I wasn’t able to glimpse Valhalla. Perhaps only Herzog & de Meuron could make the Breuer Building feel like a casino.
As a matter of honesty, it seems fitting the museum has become a permanent art fair: Its walls—mostly white but at times painted dark blue or green—are densely hung with jaw-dropping work from a range of collections, each with a suggested price range for its expected sum. This allows a good gut check for all the window shoppers. Maybe all museums should do this. What would you need to drop for Salvador Dali’s Symbiose de la tête aux coquillages? $2 million to $3 million. How about Henri Matisse’s Léda et le cygne, an astounding triptych with Leda and the swan at its center concealed by operable doors? $7 to $10 million. And Frida Kahlo’s bed-rot self-portrait? An estimated $40 to $60 million.
There are some cheap seats. I wandered into a yellow room with pieces from the Kelly Collection of American Illustration where prices start at $20,000. “Not bad!” I thought. You could pick up a warm red Donald Judd wall piece from Joel Shapiro’s collection for a cool $60,000 to $80,000. Would you rather have a midsize wedding in New York or your own Judd to have and to hold?
In all seriousness, the work on offer is choice, as it is sourced from collections of 20th century collectors with serious taste and deep pockets. The lead auction is work amassed by Leonard A. Lauder, of the Estée Lauder family, who died earlier this year. Other names will be familiar to architects: The Cindy and Jay Pritzker Collection is up for bid; the couple funded the Pritzker Prize beginning in 1979 and were central protagonists in the creation of Chicago’s Millennium Park. Jay was a founder of the Hyatt Corporation; he died in 1999, and Cindy died last March. (The aforementioned Matisse was theirs.) A smaller lot comes from Sam and Marilyn Fox, prominent business leaders in St. Louis who both died in 2024; a naming gift from them helped establish the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in 2006.
Charles F. Stewart, the CEO of Sotheby’s, described the reopening as a “homecoming of sorts” and connected the act with the wave of major museum improvements recently completed or underway in New York. Standing before a crowd of journalists, he said Sotheby’s “bought the Breuer because we want more people to access, experience, learn, discover, and ultimately to own fine art and luxury objects.” It is estimated that this round of auctions, sold from its new flagship, will yield around $1 billion in sales.
One could bemoan the sum, but for now it is our gain: These works are on view and open to the public for free ahead of their possession by new owners. Who knows when they will see the light of a gallery wall again? It is better that they are here for some weeks rather than stuffed in a lonely wing of a seasonal-use mansion or in some high-security storage vault. Art wants to be seen.
So, go check it out. There is something for everyone. And be sure to brave the line for the most selfie-inducing of them all: A back corner hosts Maurizio Cattelan’s America, a solid gold toilet weighing over 200 pounds installed within an infinity-mirrored bathroom, complete with gold sink hardware, a gold toilet-paper holder, and gold signage. Did President Trump advise on the interior design? The piece, first installed as a working toilet at the Guggenheim in 2016, is a timely send up of our current moment, both in national politics and art-world posturing.
It appears that Sotheby’s, a company in the business for over 280 years, aims to be a good steward of the Breuer Building. And if fortunes change and Sotheby’s needs to sell the place, I’m sure they know a guy.
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