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Home » New OMA-designed Sotheby’s Hosts Record-Breaking Sales
Architecture NewsProjects

New OMA-designed Sotheby’s Hosts Record-Breaking Sales

Sotheby

In the double-height gallery on the ground floor, original concrete columns are exposed.

Photo © Brett Beyer Photography

Sotheby

In a nod to Sotheby’s London, the thresholds into galleries are lined in custom-stained walnut panels.

Photo © Brett Beyer Photography

Sotheby

The concrete columns, original to the former factory building, were hand stippled, exposing the aggregate.

Photo © Brett Beyer Photography

Sotheby

Clerestory windows bring daylight into double-height galleries.

Photo © Brett Beyer Photography

Sotheby

Claude Monet’s painting, Meules (1890) (left), was part of yesterday evening’s Impressionist & Modern Art auction.

Photo © Brett Beyer Photography

Sotheby

Gallery types include white cube.

Photo © Brett Beyer Photography

Sotheby

An enfilade gallery.

Photo © Brett Beyer Photography

Sotheby

Some columns are hidden within walls that are as much as 4 ½’ thick.

Photo © Brett Beyer Photography

Sotheby

Art of Africa, Oceania and the Americas sold on Monday.  

Photo © Brett Beyer Photography

Sotheby

In some galleries, including this one showcasing contemporary art, ceiling ductwork is exposed.

Photo © Brett Beyer Photography

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May 15, 2019
Josephine Minutillo
KEYWORDS galleries / New York City
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Architects & Firms

OMA

When Sotheby’s unveiled its revamped New York headquarters earlier this month, the art installations within the new galleries rivaled any in the venerated museums—the Met, Met Breuer, Frick, Guggenheim—within walking distance of it on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. But the 275-year-old auction house isn’t competing with those neighboring institutions. “The art market is changing so rapidly and substantially,” says Allan Schwartzman, Sotheby’s executive vice president and chairman of the fine-art division. “We envision programming well beyond the historical core of our business.”

Sotheby’s had been considering leaving its home of nearly 20 years, a 10-story building that covers an entire city block, for a move to Midtown. Says Schwartzman, “There were fundamental limitations to displaying art in, and moving through, our building,”—a four-story former factory onto which six stories were added in a 2001 project by KPF. Sotheby’s engaged several architects to develop designs for a new space it had selected, but also to reimagine its existing building—in order to convince the board that a move was necessary.

Ironically, the scheme by OMA NY partner Shohei Shigematsu convinced them otherwise. “There are columns every 20 feet on the lower levels,” Schwartzman explains. “But Shohei found a way to embed columns in walls, or, when visible, to become a prominent feature of the architecture.”

“Brands reach out to architects when they are rethinking their brand,” says Shigematsu. “So it’s about much more than the architecture.” Here, though, in OMA’s first major gallery space in the U.S., the architectural moves—in some cases drastic, like slicing through floor slabs to create double-height galleries, in others subtle, such as lining the thresholds into gallery clusters with custom-stained walnut panels in a nod to Sotheby’s London—offer the auction house ideal ways to show art and luxury goods in isolation and in broader combination. All galleries were moved to the lower four levels, increasing exhibition space from 67,000 to over 90,000 square feet. The new configuration is more welcoming to the public and eliminates the bottleneck of traffic to what had been its premiere exhibition space on the 10th floor, which will be converted to offices. “There’s no hierarchy now,” notes Schwartzman. The $55 million project includes 40 new galleries of 20 distinct types—from white cube to enfilade, octagonal, and L-shaped—that range in size and materials to respond to different sales, exhibitions, and events, and allow the auction house to easily and frequently change out shows without disrupting other galleries or building temporary walls. “Flexibility is provided through diversity,” says Shigematsu.

Adds Schwartzman, “Having these redesigned galleries positions us to be able to grow the business in ways that we don’t even know about, but that will be needs of the near and further future.” In the meantime, the new space served as the perfect backdrop for Monday night's record-breaking sales, which included the $110.7 million sale of Meules (1890)—the highest sum ever paid for a work by Claude Monet, or any Impressionist work of art.

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Josephine-cropped1

Josephine Minutillo has been a contributor to Architectural Record since 2001. After practicing architecture for several years in New York City, she turned her attention full time to writing, joining the staff of RECORD as Senior Editor in 2008. In her current role as Features Editor, she reports on major building projects, exhibitions, and design innovation. Her articles have also appeared in Interior Design, Mark, Frame, Surface, Azure, Whitewall, Interni, Monument and Encyclopedia Britannica, and she was previously a Contributing Editor to Architectural Digest. She has been an invited critic at Washington University in St. Louis, The Cooper Union, Columbia GSAPP, Pratt Institute, The City College of New York, and Yale University.

Instagram: @josephineminutillo_

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