Whitney Museum Sells Breuer Building to Sotheby’s
The move represents a return to Sotheby’s roots, given that the auction house once occupied the Parke-Bernet Galleries across Madison Avenue, where Gagosian is now.
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. Would the Whitney ultimately take back the building and operate uptown as well as downtown? Would the Breuer building end up as some wealthy person’s private residence or a fancy retail store?
Many questioned whether the Whitney would make a successful new start in that scrappier part of Manhattan, having become so closely linked with the Breuer. What was the Whitney without Breuer? What was Breuer without the Whitney?
Leonard A. Lauder, the Whitney’s powerful chairman emeritus, initially opposed the museum’s move downtown as risky, and insisted that the Whitney commit to not selling the Breuer for 20 years. But Lauder ultimately became a convert to the new location and it was named for him: the Leonard A. Lauder Building.
“When the discussion started, it was before the completion of the High Line, before Hudson Yards started and before a lot of the major building boom,” Lauder told The Times in 2016. “I was afraid, in truth, that the Whitney would be a lonely institution down in a neighborhood that was waiting to happen. Well, it’s happening.”
Indeed, the Whitney in its new location has become an integral part of that neighborhood’s rejuvenation — helping spur continued residential and commercial development in the area around the High Line and Hudson Yards.
Source: The New York Times
