The Pritzker-winning architects Herzog & de Meuron will renovate the modernist Breuer building into Sotheby’s new global headquarters, the auction house announced on Monday, adding that it has completed the purchase of the Madison Avenue building from the Whitney Museum.
The Breuer building, once home to the Whitney, more recently housed the Frick Collection and served as an exhibition space for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s modern and contemporary collection. The renovated building will contain Sotheby’s sales room, as well as exhibition and dining spaces. Work is expected to be completed by fall 2025.
Herzog & de Meuron — known for projects such as Tate Modern in London, the de Young Museum in San Francisco and the Park Avenue Armory in New York — has made a specialty of adaptive reuse, or transforming existing structures.
“By reviving lost spaces, carefully inserting new ones and doing other subtle interventions with a considered palette of materials, the building will be prepared for its new role in the auction world,” Jacques Herzog, one of the firm’s founders, said in a statement, “and will also be more accessible again for visitors and the people of New York.”
Herzog & de Meuron, which is based in Basel, Switzerland, will work with PBDW Architects, a New York firm, on the design.
The five-story building, designed by the Bauhaus-trained architect Marcel Breuer and completed in 1966, is in a landmark district, which gives its exterior protected status, though the building does not have individual landmark designation and the interior is not protected. Last December, Docomomo US/New York Tri-State, an organization dedicated to preserving modern architecture, filed a request with the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission seeking interior landmark status for the Breuer.
“For the first time it will no longer serve its original purpose as a museum. Nor will it be occupied by an institution,” the request said, asking that the preservation commission consider protecting the interior spaces “in a timely fashion before a new owner with different priorities executes any irreparable alterations.”
Charles F. Stewart, the auction house’s chief executive, said last year that Sotheby’s was “committed to preserving the integrity of what’s loved about the building,” including the lobby. Sotheby’s has said it does not plan to change the building’s exterior.
Calling the Breuer building “a museum masterpiece,” Stewart said in a prepared statement, “we embark on its adaptation with the same level of care and respect that we would give to a great work of art.”
Sotheby’s, which recently opened new flagships in Paris and Hong Kong, will retain ownership of its current headquarters on York Avenue until it opens in the Breuer building.
The auction house, whose business has softened along with that of the rest of the art market, announced last week that it had closed a $1 billion investment deal with the Abu Dhabi-based sovereign wealth fund ADQ, which has joined Sotheby’s as a minority shareholder alongside the auction house’s majority owner, Patrick Drahi.
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