Of all the multimillion-dollar artworks available for sale at Sotheby’s this month, only Maurizio Cattelan’s gold toilet has its own rope barrier.
The 223-pound, fully operational 18-karat “America” (2016), consigned by hedge fund billionaire and Mets owner Steve Cohen, is expected to fetch roughly $10 million, or about one-third of Mets first baseman Pete Alonso’s 2025 salary.
For now, it rests in a brightly lit mirrored room in the auction house’s new headquarters in the iconic Breuer Building at 945 Madison Avenue, which is opening to the public on Saturday, November 8. But don’t even think about putting your butt on that gilded throne.
The outside of the Breuer Building
“At the Guggenheim, it was used but we’re not going to do that here,” Lisa Dennison, Sotheby’s Americas Chairman told Hyperallergic. “You can’t sit on the art.”
At a press preview earlier today, Friday, November 7, Sotheby’s CEO Charles Stewart said the opportunity to show the world’s most valuable artworks and collectibles in a museum setting was one they could not pass up.
“We want more people to access, to experience, to learn, to discover, and ultimately to own fine art and luxury objects,” he told a crowd at the press preview on Friday. “For us, the Breuer Building is a key gateway to explore and develop those opportunities.”
The interior of the Breuer building, with artworks for sale
That includes the art market. It has been volatile, with sales down 12% in 2024 to $57.5 billion, according to a report by Art Basel and UBS.
Madeline Lissner, executive vice president for Sotheby’s global fine art division, believes the market is beginning to turn around, and that purchasing the Breuer Building would help expand its audience.
“We are free and open to the public,” she told Hyperallergic. “Auction houses are the best-kept secret in the art world.”
A view of the Cindy and Jay Pritzker Collection in the interior of the Breuer building
The auction house purchased Marcel Breuer’s iconic Brutalist building in 2023 from the Whitney Museum for $100 million to serve as its new headquarters.
The Whitney had leased the Breuer to the Metropolitan Museum of Art a decade ago before turning the keys over to the Frick, which displayed its priceless Vermeers and Rembrandts for three years before returning to its Fifth Avenue mansion in March.
Fans of previous iterations will notice several changes. Architects Herzog & de Meuron and PBDW enlarged the exhibition area inside the 80,000-square-foot building by nearly 30 percent, restored the lower-level space for a restaurant and sculpture garden, added a new freight elevator, and converted back offices and an art restoration room into additional galleries (Sotheby’s leased four floors of its former York Avenue headquarters for its offices and acquired another building in Long Island City to store its collectibles).
The interior of the Breuer Building, with artworks for sale
There were a few concessions. Sotheby’s former showroom at 1334 York Avenue had a capacity of 320 people and featured a lazy Susan-like contraption that rotated to reveal different lots available for bid.
In the Breuer Building, the fifth-floor gallery will be converted into a showroom for high rollers who need a separate space from the merely wealthy. This complex renovation will involve temporarily removing several sheet rock walls and installing a row of private seats. The new area will have a capacity of around 200 bidders, and art handlers will bring out artworks by hand during auctions.
A Sotheby’s spokesperson talks about the art on view
“We think it will be a more intimate experience,” Dennison said.
Unlike the Frick, you can buy whatever you like right off the walls for the right price. Sotheby’s upcoming auctions, beginning the week of November 17, feature an eclectic mix of modern and contemporary masterworks owned by philanthropists including Cindy and Jay Pritzker and the late Leonard Lauder.
The highlight of Lauder’s collection is Gustav Klimt’s full-length society portrait, “Bildnis Elisabeth Lederer” (1914–16), which is expected to fetch $150 million and give Amedeo Modigliani’s “Nu Couché” (1917) a run for most expensive sale of the year.
A work by Jeff Koons in the Breuer Building
But Lauder also amassed many contemporary paintings, including Agnes Martin’s “The Garden” (1964), which is estimated to sell for more than $10 million, and several small Matisse sculptures.
The Pritzkers leaned more toward Impressionists and modern works, with an unusual Vincent van Gogh oil painting of his Parisian apartment, “Piles de romans français et roses dans un verre” (1887), which Sotheby’s expects to go for $40 million.
Other gallery rooms include standout works from Kerry James Marshall, Rashid Johnson, Antonio Obá, Andrew Wyeth, Mark Rothko, Salvador Dalí, and Frida Kahlo. The first floor features an assemblage of Roy Lichtenstein’s paintings, and the ground floor sculpture garden includes works by John Chamberlain and Anish Kapoor.
Handbags, watches, and jewelry on sale in the Breuer Building
But the most surprising exhibition was a series of Hermes handbags, high-end watches, and bejeweled necklaces and earrings in small booths to the left of the main entrance. One Van Cleef & Arpels zip necklace, which was inspired by the Duchess of Windsor in the 1930s, was available for $550,000, or roughly the price of a Murray Hill co-op.
The new Sotheby’s building feels truly at home on Madison Avenue, the elite shopping corridor frequented by the free-spending audience it most needs to attract.
