Sotheby’s will buy the former site of the Whitney Museum of American Art and move its headquarters from the York Avenue building it has lived in for more than four decades, a deal that confirms months of rumors about the house’s real estate maneuvers. auction.
Sotheby’s has not commented on the building’s price, but people familiar with the matter have said The New York Times And Artnet News the Whitney had sold its Marcel Breuer-designed building for just over $100 million. Sotheby’s will take possession of the Breuer building in September 2024, the auction house said, but will retain ownership of the York Avenue complex until its new galleries open in the Breuer building in 2025.
Breuer’s Brutalist structure has been an integral part of the New York art world since its completion in 1966. It housed the Whitney until 2015, when the museum moved in his new Renzo Piano-designed home in the Meatpacking District. Thereafter, it served as an outpost of the Metropolitan Museum of Art known as the Met Breuer, where the museum has held exhibitions of modern and contemporary art. Currently, it is leased to the Frick Collection while that museum’s Upper East Side mansion is undergoing a renovation (The Frick Lease ends August 2024).
“We are honored to acquire and write the next chapter in such an iconic and well-known New York architectural landmark,” Sotheby’s Chief Executive Charles F. Stewart said in a statement. “We often refer to the provenance of works of art, and in the case of The Breuer, there is no richer history than the museum that housed the Whitney, Metropolitan and Frick collections.”
Rumors of Sotheby’s potential head office move have been circulating for months. In the June print issue, The arts journal reported that the auction house is considering selling its current New York flagship, a former cigar factory and Kodak warehouse at 1334 York Avenue on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
The owner of the auction house Patrick Drahi, the French-Israeli billionaire, refinanced the 500,000-square-foot building in 2020 with a five-year, $483 million floating-rate loan from Barclays, according to The Real Deal, a real estate news site. In 2020, US interest rates were at zero. Last month, the Federal Reserve raised the cost of borrowing to 5.25%, its highest level in 16 years.
During the same period, the stock price of Altice USA, the cable television company owned by Drahi, fell 93%. Altice USA is based in Long Island City where, in February 2020, Sotheby’s also spent $82 million on a new nine-story office building.
Despite today’s news, only a few weeks ago a Sotheby’s spokesperson denied rumors of the move, saying The Journal of the Arts: “York Avenue is not for sale”.
Sotheby’s bought the York Avenue location for $11 million and spent $140 million expanding and renovating the space before moving in in 1980. Sotheby’s sold the building in 2002, amid a price-fixing scandal it also involved rival Christie’s – for $175 million to real estate firm RFR Holding, which leased it to the auction house. Sotheby’s bought the space in 2009 for $370 million. In 2019, Sotheby’s spent an additional $55 million to renovate its York Avenue complex to maximize gallery space.
The Breuer construction deal will provide a significant boost to Whitney’s staffing. The sale will also allow the museum to “focus all of its attention and energies on carrying our mission” to the Meatpacking District, Whitney’s outgoing director Adam Weinberg said in a statement.
