The renowned auction house Sotheby’s returns to its place of origin, Madison Avenue, and an icon of brutalism once again becomes an epicenter for the art public in Manhattan: the building completed in 1966 for the Whitney Museum, designed by Marcel Breuer, a master of the Bauhaus, has reopened with a project by Herzog & De Meuron with Pbdw Architects.
That of the Swiss architects – who also designed the garden dedicated to Alexander Calder, in Philadelphia – can be described as an invisible intervention: a goal achieved through a philological study and the restoration of the original brutalist spirit of the space. The basalt floors return, restored, as do the coffered ceilings and the lighting system that has itself become iconic. The staircase returns; the areas on the second floor that had become offices once again serve as exhibition galleries. Two walls have been added on the third floor, further emphasizing the central role of the large telescope-like window that characterizes the façade.
That of Herzog & De Meuron is an invisible intervention: it restores the original spirit of the Breuer Building, renewing the brutalist icon without betraying its soul.
The new chapter in the life of the Breuer Building therefore consists of salesrooms and spaces for the discovery of Sotheby’s collection, covering more than 7,000 square meters, and soon also a new restaurant, designed by interior studio Roman and Williams.
Opening the auction season will be sales from the Leonard Lauder Collection, followed by the Cindy and Jay Pritzker Collection, and then the Contemporary Day sales featuring works by Donald Judd, Yayoi Kusama, and Jean-Michel Basquiat, along with Maurizio Cattelan’s much-discussed golden toilet.
Few buildings have had so many different lives as the Breuer Building, all of them iconic and celebrated. The granite-clad monolith that once provoked so much debate underwent its first change of identity when the Whitney Museum moved to its new home designed by Renzo Piano Building Workshop, inaugurated in 2015 at the foot of the High Line. In 2016, The Met Breuer opened on Madison Avenue as the Metropolitan Museum’s branch for modern and contemporary art, with an initial renovation project.
From 2021, it was the turn of the Frick Collection, until its new location a short walk from Central Park, a project by Selldorf Architects – the same firm behind the renewed Sainsbury Wing at the National Gallery in London, now shortlisted for the new Louvre. And here comes the latest chapter: the announcement of Sotheby’s purchase of the Breuer Building, which with its 2025 reopening relocates the brutalist monument within the New York and global atlas of contemporary art.