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.
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