Whitney Museum sells Breuer Building to Sotheby’s for approximately $100 million

Confirming the rumors that had the art world buzzing this spring, Sotheby’s said Thursday it has purchased Marcel Breuer’s 1966 Whitney Museum of American Art’s Brutalist building on Madison Avenue and will move its headquarters there from York Avenue in 2025.

The purchase price of the Breuer building was not disclosed, but two people involved in the deal asked for it unidentifiable because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly, put the figure at about $100 million.

“It’s bittersweet,” Adam D. Weinberg, Whitney’s principal, said of saying goodbye to the building for good. “I know every square inch of it and think it is one of the great art monuments out there. It is a masterpiece of modern architecture.”

Sotheby’s CEO Charles F. Stewart called the Breuer Building “a once in a lifetime opportunity that we couldn’t pass up”, adding that “the location couldn’t be more ideal for our client base” to view art, art at attend sales and meet specialists.

“The chance to buy an iconic museum in a big city — this isn’t happening,” Stewart continued. While the auction house will hire an architect to reinvent Breuer’s interior and create a sales space within the five-story structure — it’s in a historic district but has no heritage designation of its own — Stewart said Sotheby’s was “committed to bringing the preserve the integrity of what loved the building,” including the lobby.

weinberg, who plans to retire next fall after 20 years, said the Breuer no longer made sense for the Whitney to keep, as the museum has doubled its exhibit space in its new Renzo Piano-designed headquarters, which also has a more accessible and welcoming presence.

“It was built for a time of great easel paintings,” Weinberg said of de Breuer. “It became clear to us that having a divided Whitney didn’t really make sense — how do you divide it?” he added. “Also. we don’t want to be landlords.”

For Sotheby’s, the Breuer represents an opportunity to improve its location on York Avenue by moving closer to the heart of the Upper East Side’s art world, an area that is home to major galleries such as Gagosian, Mnuchin, and Acquavella, and where smaller galleries are growing. The Madison Avenue location will also increase foot traffic to Sotheby’s exhibits, namely the pre-auction previews, that give members of the public the chance to view prized works of art before they disappear into private hands.

The move represents a return to Sotheby’s roots, given that the auction house once occupied the Parke-Bernet Galleries across Madison Avenue, where Gagosian is now.

The deal – which Sotheby’s and the Whitney declined to confirm in response to questions from The Times in April – finally resolves the fate of the Breuer building, which has been on the line since the Whitney moved to the meatpacking district in 2015. Whitney eventually take back the building and operate both uptown and downtown? Would the Breuer Building end up as a wealthy person’s private residence or a fancy shop?

Many wondered if the Whitney would make a successful new start in that sloppier part of Manhattan now that they were so closely associated with the Breuer. What was the Whitney without Breuer? What was Breuer without the Whitney?

Leonard A. Lauder, the Whitney’s powerful chairman emeritus initially opposed the museum’s move to downtown as risky, insisting that the Whitney commit themselves not to sell the Breuer for the foreseeable future. But Lauder eventually converted to the new location and it was named after him: the Leonard A. Lauder Building.

“When the discussion started it was before the completion of the High Line, before Hudson Yards started and before much of the big building boom,” Lauder told The Times in 2016. “I was actually worried that the Whitney would be a lonesome institution in a neighborhood that has been waiting for it. Well, it happens.”

Indeed, the Whitney in its new location has become an integral part of that neighborhood’s rejuvenation – helping to spur further residential and commercial development in the High Line and Hudson Yards area.

After the Whitney’s departure, the Metropolitan Museum of Art leased the building for six years and showcased contemporary art at the Met Breuer. Among his notable shows goods “Unfinished: Thoughts Left Visible”, featuring artwork in various stages of completion, as well as Kerry James Marshall’s retrospective, ‘Mastry’.

The Met then turned the space over to the Frick Collection, which has been using the building while the 1914 Gilded Age mansion on Fifth Avenue is being renovated.

Below Sotheby’s, the Breuer Building on East 75th Street will include gallery and exhibition space, as well as an auction room. Whether the auction house will keep the underground restaurant is yet to be determined.

Sotheby’s will take over the Breuer Building in September 2024, when the Frick leaves. It is planned to move next year.

The modernist building was designed by Breuer, a Hungarian-born, Bauhaus-trained architect. Although many disliked the brooding, stiff building architecture, de Breuer was considered the ideal space to display art and sculpture from the 20th and 21st centuries. “It was a beautiful combination of form and function,” wrote Michael Kimmelman in 2015 in The New York Times. “The exhibition floors were not only practical and flexible. They were also unusual, refined and muscular, with their gridded concrete ceilings. Outside and inside, the mix of gray granite, concrete and slate conveyed extreme finesse.”

Founded in 1930, the Whitney opened in 1931 on West Eighth Street near Fifth Avenue. In 1954, the museum moved to an expanded site at 22 West 54th Street before moving to the Breuer in 1966. Koolhaas and Renzo Piano.

In 2024, Sotheby’s will open its new flagship galleries in Hong Kong and Paris. Sotheby’s will open later this year Gantry point in Long Island City, NY, a 240,000 square foot art handling and storage facility.

Sotheby’s retains ownership of the headquarters it has occupied since 1980 at 1334 York Avenue — expanding it in 2019 — and where the company will continue to operate until it moves to the Breuer Building.

“I really appreciated that they believed we’re going to be great stewards of this building,” Stewart said of the Whitney. “Open to the public, showcasing art – the use of the building will be consistent with the reason it was built. There is a continuum.”