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Sotheby's purchases Marcel Breuer's Brutalist Whitney for a rumored $100 million

2023-06-01T17:56:00-04:00

Sotheby’s said Thursday that it has purchased the Whitney Museum of American Art’s 1966 Brutalist building by Marcel Breuer on Madison Avenue and will move its headquarters there from York Avenue in 2025. The deal — which Sotheby’s and the Whitney refused to confirm in response to queries from The Times in April — finally resolves the fate of the Breuer building, which has hung in the balance since the Whitney moved down to the meatpacking district in 2015.

The auction house will operate a rotating exhibition space out of the building — in addition to hosting live auctions — beginning in September 2024. There are no plans for the subterranean level restaurant at this time. The Frick Collection, which has been leasing the building since the Met walked away in March of 2020, will officially move back into its $160 million Selldorf Architects-renovated original East 70th Street location in the months prior.

The New York Times reported a source mentioning the deal, which was brokered between the current landlords Whitney Museum and Sotheby's, was worth approximately $100 million. Sotheby's CEO Charles F. Stewart explained to the paper that it was simply a "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that we couldn’t pass up."

Frick Collection to vacate Marcel Breuer's 945 Madison Avenue building by next year

2023-04-24T17:53:00-04:00

The Frick Collection will vacate its Brutalist temporary home on New York’s Madison Avenue and return to Henry Clay Frick’s historic Fifth Avenue mansion in 2024. [...] The fate of the Breuer building—which was for decades the home of the Whitney Museum of American Art and, following that museum’s relocation to the Meatpacking District, a temporary outpost of the Metropolitan Museum of Art dubbed the Met Breuer—is unknown.

“Our residency at Frick Madison has been rewarding and productive, and we look forward to the remaining months of our time at 945 Madison Avenue, as we continue to gain new insights into our collection by seeing it reframed in this unprecedented way,” the Frick’s director Ian Wardropper said in an announcement.

The museum replaced The Met two years ago following that institution’s own ill-fated five-year run that ended in the spring of 2020. The Frick now expects its return to the original 1 East 70th Street location in March of next year after Selldorf Architects’ contested $160 million refresh. As The Art Newspaper reported, the future tenant (and owner) of 945 Madison currently remains in doubt while its current landlord, the Whitney Museum, looks for answers.

Frida Escobedo has replaced David Chipperfield on the Met's $500 million modern and contemporary wing expansion

2022-03-14T14:56:00-04:00

Change at the top of the museum world as New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art has announced Mexican architect Frida Escobedo as its new designer of the forthcoming Oscar L. Tang and H.M. Agnes Hsu-Tang Wing for modern and contemporary art.

Escobedo now officially replaces David Chipperfield, who had been selected by then-director Thomas Campbell in 2015. An announcement from the museum noted that the new wing will encompass some 80,000 square feet of more accessible galleries and public space all made possible by the Tang’s contribution to the nearly $500 million total cost.

The 42-year-old’s work has thus far been defined most notably by her 2018 design for the Serpentine Pavilion and through her eponymous Mexico City-based practice, which has authored a wide range of projects that include everything from historic renovation of an iconic hotel in Acapulco to investigations into the lives of domestic workers in Mexico City, among other standout projects. Escobedo has held teaching ...

The fate of Marcel Breuer's Frick Madison building could fall into developer hands soon

2021-09-20T19:01:00-04:00

The Breuer building, an architectural icon and the former longtime home of the Whitney Museum of American Art, could soon have a new owner. The Whitney is considering the sale of the building and brokers are compiling lists of potential buyers, according to sources in the art world and real estate. Now the multi-million-dollar question is: If the building is sold, can it be developed?

The brutalist masterpiece know colloquially for its architect Marcel Breuer opened as the new home of the Whitney Museum in 1966. The building exchanged hands in 2015 as the Met expanded past Fifth Avenue for the first time to make room for the collection of billionaire cosmetics heir Leonard A. Lauder.

Previously on Archinect: Frick Collection opens in Marcel Breuer-designed temporary new home, Frick Madison

The Met Breuer’s ill-fared run ended in March of 2020 before reopening in the spring after a pandemic overhaul led by Selldorf Architects. The new Frick Madison will occupy the current site for the remainder of its lease, which runs through the end of next year.

Frick Collection opens in Marcel Breuer-designed temporary new home, Frick Madison

2021-03-23T18:07:00-04:00

While the Frick Collection's Gilded Age mansion in Manhattan undergoes a $160-million expansion and renovation project led by Selldorf Architects with Executive Architect Beyer Blinder Belle, highlights of the substantial art collection have found a temporary new home for the next two years inside Marcel Breuer's iconic Brutalist building on Madison Avenue.

The modernist Marcel Breuer building on Madison Ave just opened as the temporary art venue, Frick Madison. Photo: Joe Coscia.

The selection of works shown, and freshly juxtaposed within its unexpected new setting at Frick Madison, includes treasured paintings and sculptures by Bellini, Clodion, Gainsborough, Goya, Holbein, Houdon, Ingres, Piero della Francesca, Rembrandt, Titian, Turner, Velázquez, Vermeer, Whistler, and many others.

Frick Madison exterior. Photo: Joe Coscia

"The Frick has created a sequence of gallery spaces at Frick Madison that reflects the museum’s traditional emphasis on intimate encounters with both art and a...

Met Breuer to serve as temporary installation site for Frick Collection

2020-06-24T17:26:00-04:00

The Met Breuer building in New York City is set to become the new temporary home to the Frick Collection as the Frick's flagship facilities undergo an expansion and renovation led by Selldorf Architects.

The Marcel Breuer-designed Brutalist style building was the original home of the Whitney Museum, which opened in 1930 and decamped to new Renzo Piano Building Workshop-designed facilities in 2015. Since then, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has been using the building to display a collection of Modern art and architecture exhibitions. The Breuer site was slated to run an exhibition of the works of Gerhard Richter through the summer, but the exhibition closed prematurely in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, Artnet reports.

Rendering showing proposed expansion of Frick Collection facilities. Image courtesy of Selldorf Architects.

The hotly debated $160 million Frick expansion project received a green light to move ahead in March. The project will bring 27,000 square feet of new s...

New York City's big art switcheroo involves The Met, The Frick, The Whitney, and a certain Marcel Breuer building

2018-09-21T19:01:00-04:00

Henry Clay Frick’s venerable Old Master paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints and porcelain seem destined for a change of scene. In an unusual game of musical chairs, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Frick Collection announced today (21 September) that the Met will vacate the Brutalist Breuer building on Madison Avenue in 2020. Its departure will make way for the Frick to move in late that year while its mansion undergoes a renovation and expansion five blocks away.

Click here to catch up with Archinect's coverage of the not entirely undramatic Frick Collection expansion saga.

As the Met moves into the old Whitney, can it shrug off the iconic building's associations with its former tenant?

2016-02-16T17:13:00-05:00

On March 18, when the Metropolitan Museum of Art opens an annex at Madison Avenue and 75th Street in Manhattan, it will be attempting to shrug off the ghost of a museum past. The specter is the Whitney Museum of American Art, which called the iconic Marcel Breuer building on that corner home for nearly five decades. In an eight-year deal, the Met is leasing the Breuer building from the Whitney— which relocated to its dazzling new Renzo Piano–designed home last year...

The Breuer-designed building will house some of the Met's modern and contemporary collection. But shrugging off the association between the Brutalist masterpiece and its former tenant may prove a tough task. For many, nothing say's "the Whitney" more than those protruding windows...

For related coverage, check out some of these older articles: