Sotheby’s buys modernist Breuer building from Whitney Museum, will move NYC galleries there

By KAREN MATTHEWS
Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — The auction house Sotheby’s will buy the modernist Marcel Breuer-designed building that housed New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art for nearly 50 years. Sotheby’s said Thursday that it will start moving its New York sale room and galleries to the Breuer building on Madison Avenue in 2024. The facility will open to the public in 2025. The cantilevered Madison Avenue building was designed by the Hungarian-born Breuer and opened in 1966 as the third home of the Whitney. The building was leased to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for five years after the Whitney moved in 2015 to the foot of the High Line, the elevated park on Manhattan’s west side.