In June 2023 Sotheby’s announced it would purchase Marcel Breuer’s former Whitney Museum of American Art building, a feat of Brutalist architecture, for $100m. Two years later, Sotheby’s says it is months away from opening at 945 Madison Avenue and has released renderings of what the space will look like as the auction house’s new galleries and salesroom.
The Breuer building first opened on the Upper East Side in 1966 as the Whitney Museum. After that institution relocated to the Meatpacking District in 2015, the building housed the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Modern and contemporary programming (under the moniker “Met Breuer”) for four years. More recently, it was the Frick Collection’s temporary home during the five-year restoration of the museum’s Gilded Age mansion.
Since Sotheby’s purchased the building from the Whitney, it has undertaken some renovations and changes, although these have been limited in scope as the museum’s exterior and, as of recently, many of its interior spaces are subject landmark protections.
A rendering of Sotheby's lobby and ground-floor gallery at 945 Madison Avenue; this rendering includes a reproduction of Georgia O’Keeffe's Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1 (1932), which will not be on view on Sotheby’s Courtesy Sotheby's. Ruth Asawa: Artwork © 2025 Ruth Asawa Lanier, Inc., Courtesy David Zwirner. Georgia O’Keeffe: © 2025 Georgia O'Keeffe Museum / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Images released by the auction house on Friday (13 June) show an exterior and lobby in line with how the spaces appeared during the building’s turns as a museum. The Swiss architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron, which is known for adaptive reuse in renovation projects such as the conversion of the Tate Modern in London from a power station, was tapped to lead the renovations. In the lobby, Herzog & de Meuron reinterpreted the former museum’s benches and counters into display cabinets, keeping the floor layout similar to the Breuer’s historic design while adding more function for Sotheby’s.
One of the most substantial elements of the renovation has been the installation of a new service elevator, which will allow more ease for the near-constant turnover of art on display at an auction house.
On the outside of the Breuer, the most notable change visible to most passers-by will be enhanced lighting under the “canopy” of the building to create better light conditions at night. By keeping the area under the cantilever from feeling like a dark corner, the design can invite the light of the city into the building, a representative for Herzog & de Meuron said.
Exterior rendering of Sotheby's at 945 Madison Avenue, with new lighting scheme Courtesy Sotheby's
For the upper-level galleries, which are not protected by landmark status, Sotheby’s restored some original gallery floorplans by removing former office spaces and by opening up previously unused spaces. Renovations have also focused on bringing the building’s lighting and climate systems up to current museum standards.
One beloved work of art at the Breuer Building will stay put: Charles Simonds’s miniature buildings and landscapes tucked away in the building’s stairwell, as well as at a location across the street, part of a permanent site-specific installation commissioned by the Whitney. Sotheby's told The Art Newspaper that the Whitney agreed to leave behind Dwellings (1981) as a long-term loan to the auction house.
While no opening date has been set, Sotheby’s says it will move into the building in the autumn in time to hold the auction house’s November sales in the new space. A spokesperson adds that while some workers will be based out of the Breuer building, a majority of Sotheby’s staff in New York will remain at the auction house’s current York Avenue headquarters.
