 |
|
|
|||||
Despite its status as an architectural celebrity, the Breuer building, commissioned by the Whitney Museum in the 1960s, has never had an easy relationship with New York City. With a hulking, top-heavy build, brooding dark-gray granite cladding, and nearly windowless facade, its as introverted as buildings come, standing confrontationally against its traditional Upper East Side neighbors. Either you love it or hate it. Critic Ada Louise Huxtable described the building as an acquired taste akin to olives or warm beer (how appetizing) yet celebrated the maximum artistry and almost hypnotic skill of its namesake architect, the Bauhaus-trained modernist Marcel Breuer. Now the historic building, also known as 945 Madison, has entered its latest chapter as the new worldwide headquarters for the 281-year-old auction house Sothebys. After a careful and subtle renovation by Swiss architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron, the space has now reopened to the public. For Sothebys, the updated building demonstrates the future of auction houses as cultural destinations. It wants its new headquarters to be a place people come for exhibitions, art fairs, lectures, panel discussions, retail, and fine dining, while better serving its collector clients with bespoke, high-end art-buying experiences. What better place to bid on masterpieces than from inside one? The hope is that the new building will bring a competitive edge to Sothebys. It arrives at a complicated time for the business, which has reportedly plunged into greater debt since billionaire Patrick Drahi took ownership in 2019. It’s also facing external headwinds as the art market slumps, prompting auction houses to diversify what they sell, cultivate new collectors, and digitize. Sothebys was responsible for $6 billion worth of sales in 2024, down from a record high of $8 billion in 2022. Architecture to the rescue? It’s museum quality, but it’s the art auction house philosophy, says Steve Wrightson, global head of real estate, facilities, and security for Sothebys. I think people who’ve been here before are going to be pleasantly surprised. [Photo: Stefan Ruiz/courtesy Sothebys] An untouchable history Change hasnt come easy to the Breuer building, and throughout its history suggestions of alterations have been met with severe skepticism. Soon after the Whitney Museum opened in 1966, it outgrew the quarters Breuer built for it, ushering in an era of uncertainty for the building. Numerous failed expansion attemptsby Norman Foster in the 70s, Michael Graves in the 80s, and Rem Koolhaas in the aughtsignited battles royal between critics and architects that played out on the pages of dailies and weeklies. Paul Goldberger, writing for The New York Times, described the building as a paradox: To add to it is to subtract from it. Eventually, the Whitney gave up on renovating and decamped for the Meatpacking District in 2015. Then a series of adaptations came, demonstrating that something different might be for the better. In 2015, the Whitney leased the space to the Met, which commissioned a $15 million restoration by Beyer Blinder Belle that brought renewed luster to the buildings bluestone floors, concrete walls, and bronze fixtures. Then the Frick Collection moved into the space temporarily to critical appeal; turns out Breuers austere brutalism is a transcendent setting for traditional portraiture. In 2023, the revolving door of tenants closed when the Whitney sold the building to Sothebys for an astounding $100 million. The acquisition was part of a real estate strategy that began at Sothebys about six years ago. Instead of housing all of its functions under one roof, as it did at its former York Street headquarters, the company decided to assemble a portfolio of spaces dedicated to a single purpose. A building in Long Island City that Sothebys purchased in 2022 is now its processing and storage center. Though the company sold its York Street building to Cornell Universitys medical school in October, it will lease four floors for offices. For auctions and exhibitions, it sought a location central to collectors with a street-facing presence. The Breuer building was right at the bulls eye of the area the real estate team identified, Wrightson says. This was the heart of the arts and culture scene in New York City, he says. [Photo: Max Touhey/courtesy Sothebys] Same structure, new function While museums and auction houses both display art, the shift in function from a space that stewards culture to a sales floor represents a major conceptual shift. Because of this, Sothebys and Herzog & de Meuron (who collaborated with the local architecture firm PDBW on the project) had their work cut out for them, even though they always intended to apply a gentle hand to the renovation. Our deep respect for Breuer drove the project from the outset, says Wim Walschap, a senior partner at the firm. Portions of the building are still under construction, including a new freight elevator and Marcel, the Roman and Williams-designed restaurant on the lower level. But the majority of the renovation, which encompasses a refreshed lobby and four floors of gallery and auction space above, is complete. Sothebys Breuer lobby gallery features works from the collection of Dorothy and Roy Lichtenstein. [Photo: Max Touhey/courtesy Sothebys] Still, preservationists worried that the Breuer building would be permanently and unsympathetically altered; they successfully lobbied the city to designate it as an individual and interior landmark, which affects the exterior plus the lobby, staircase, and portions of the restaurant visible from the street. Moreover, even though Sothebys is keeping the building open to the public, theres a distinction between that notion and a public building, wrote Philip Kennicott in The Washington Post. Museums exist to preserve culture; the art market exists to make a profit off the exchange of a commodity. Going to the Breuer will be like going to a wake. The actual experience is more like visiting your old home after the new owners have moved in: The spaces are familiar but different. For the Breuer, we kept what carries identity and public life: structure and spatial sequence, primary materials and tactility, calibrated light, and the way a building meets the street, Walschap says. We removed later accretions that cloud the original intent and revived lost spaces where they clarified the experience. Limited-edition Herms Birkin bags [Photo: Stefan Ruiz/courtesy Sothebys] All the features that made the building distinctivecrossing over the moat of the sculpture garden, the luminous lobby ceiling, the large windowsare still there. But the concrete benches in the lobby are now vitrines, and the coat check in the corner is a retail space selling luxury lifestyle products like Patek Philippe watches, first editions of literary classics like Alice in Wonderland, and limited-edition Birkin bags. The original galleries, which were not landmarked, are structurally the same as before. However, the second levels dark parquet floor has been changed to white oak. We tried to get it refinished and it was just splintering so we had to replace it, Wrightson says. A bit like theater The most major interventions to the Breuer involved modifying the building to better serve the logistical needs of Sothebys, which are more demanding than a museum due to the volume of objects and number of exhibitions it displays in a year. A museum might have a dozen special exhibitions over the course of a year; Sothebys averages 125. It’s a bit like theater, but it’s also like a Formula One event, Wrightson says of the precision turnover that happens. The goal is to be able to change an entire exhibition in 48 hours. Most changes to the building that make this possible are completely out of sight from visitors: Herzog & de Meuron lengthened the loading dock and inserted a new freight elevator in what were formerly administrative spaces in the northeastern section of the building. This way, Wrightson says, we can maneuver in the background. In the lobby: Frank Stellas Concentric Square (left) and Jean Arps Ptolémée III [Photo: Max Touhey/courtesy Sothebys] Sothebys has 30% more exhibition space than the buildings previous incarnation as the Frick Madison. To find this room, Herzog & de Meuron converted back-of-house and administrative areas into galleries, which sometimes resemble typical white-box galleries that feel like they could be anywhere. Instead of replicating Breuers tectonic sensibility in the new exhibition spaces, the firm channeled his intentions. New work aligns with the existing rhythms and joints, remains legible and light touch, and, whre possible, is reversible, Walschap says. From left: Dorothea Tannings Interior with Sudden Joy, Frida Kahlos El sueo, and Victor Brauners Maison hantée will be auctioned November 20, 2025. [Photo: Max Touhey/courtesy Sothebys] Back when Breuer designed the building, the Whitneys collection primarily consisted of painting and sculpture, and his structure is well suited for those mediums. Sothebys sells a far wider range of objects and artwork, so having a blank canvas gives the exhibition teams more options for viewing experiences. We could have a dinosaur in a gallery one day and then the next day it could be a basketball jersey, Wrightson says. So we really have to be able to plan for all of those different needs. The fifth floor, which the Frick used for offices, is now primarily gallery space, plus flexible work space for about 50 Sothebys employees who need to be on-site. The public hasn’t seen [this floors] windows and skylights for the better part of a decade, Wrightson says. He thinks jewelry and watches, which benefit from natural light, will look especially good here. A site for desire Adaptability was a critical element of the renovation to support the range of objects Sothebys sells but also the new formats it uses to sell them, like online auctions and livestreams. To make installations efficient, the design team created a metal-framed wall system that straps to the concrete coffered ceiling that Breuer designed. And to give curators more options to illuminate art, Herzog & de Meuron created custom LED track lighting, which nestles into the concrete ceiling, that can be operated remotely. The ceiling also proved to be an ideal mount for cameras that Sothebys uses for virtual sales. When we first started doing livestreams back in June of 2021, it was an army of people who would come in with multiple giant boom cameras and we’d have massive control rooms set up with cables spread out everywhere. That’s gone, Wrightson says. Most of that is now happening remotely with what looks like joysticks. The redesigned fourth floor of the Breuer currently holds works from the Leonard A. Lauder collection scheduled for auction on November 18, 2025. [Photo: Max Touhey/courtesy Sothebys] The Breuer building gives Sothebys more options for what an art buying, shopping, or appreciation experience embodies. The buildings fourth floor, which is a double-height space, will serve as the main gallery space most of the time and convert into an auction room whenever there is a sale. (Sothebys is still working out what the auction room will look like.) This also means creating more opportunities for exclusivity. The levels mezzanine, which also used to be offices, now features private viewing areas and skyboxes for clients who want a birds-eye view of the action. A former conservation studio is now a viewing area for works that require black lights to examine. Meanwhile, the auctioneers who prefer to have more intimate sales, like those who specialize in wine and watches, have the option to use the restaurant, which visitors will be able to access directly from Madison Avenue once its open next year. They like more of a banquet-style table and more of a playful experience, Wrightson says. With its new headquarters, Sothebys architectural language is more aligned with the mass appeal of a major cultural institution than the art market. Its trying to make auction houses cool. I can imagine regular museumgoers who havent stepped foot in an auction house before will be thrilled about admission-free access to see Kahlos and Klimts before collectors squirrel them away, just as I can see the thrill collectors might take in going shopping in what feels like a museum. As its viral auctioneer Phyllis Kao told Ssense, Sothebys really sells desire; a pedigreed set and setting enhances that effect. During the peak of the Breuer building style in the 1980s, Village Voice critic Michael Sorkin summed up the challenges of retooling an architectural darling. Adding to a masterpiece is always difficult, calling for discipline, sensitivity, restraint, he wrote. Above all, though, it calls for respect. Thankfully, outstanding original architecture remains crucial to all the audiences Sothebys wants to welcome into its world. Whether or not visitors will be pleasantly surprised, as Wrightson hopes, may come down to how they feel about the art market itself.
Category:
E-Commerce
When he takes office next year, Zohran Mamdani will be the first mayor of New York City in decades not to own a car. Mamdaniwho bikes and rides public transit to workwants to make city buses both faster to ride and free, building on a fare-free pilot he helped run in 2023. He also plans to expand the citys network of bike lanes, add more car-free streets in front of schools, and wants to pedestrianize more areas in Manhattan as congestion pricing has reduced traffic. “In a city where the majority of households are car-free, we haven’t had a car-free mayor in a really long time,” says Alexa Sledge, communications director at the nonprofit Transportation Alternatives. “It’s really exciting to see how he can prioritize the vast majority of the New Yorkers who do walk, bike, and take public transportation every single day.” Mamdani inherits a city with streets that have massively transformed over the last two decades. “People have seen their streets change in real time,” says Janette Sadik-Khan, the former commissioner of the New York City Department of Transportation under the Bloomberg Administration. Sadik-Khan, now a principal at Bloomberg Associates, built nearly 400 miles of bike lanes, launched Citi Bike, introduced new rapid bus lanes, created dozens of plazas, and pedestrianized Times Square. The changes have continued to roll out. New York now has 1,500 miles of bike lanes, more than half a million daily cyclists, and a mile-long stretch of 14th Street dedicated entirely to buses. Under the city’s Streets Plan, passed in 2019, Mamdani’s administration must add 50 miles of bike lanes and 30 miles of bus lanes each yeartargets the Adams administration missed. But he wants to go farther. He’s proposed making buses free to ride, though that’s likely to be a tough sell with the MTA. He also wants to bring true bus rapid transit to the city. “A car-free bus lane can move 8,000 people an hour; meanwhile a busway on a car-free street can move 25,000 people an hour in each direction,” he told Streetsblog earlier this year. “This is an essential service that New Yorkers need, especially those in transit deserts or those forced to rely on the poor service of our current bus system.” Right now, he says, city buses only move at an average of 8 miles an hour. The 14th Street Busway sped up buses by 30%, and other major roads across the cityincluding in the outer boroughscould see the same results with a similar design. “People walking and biking and taking transit far outnumber those in cars, but the street does not reflect that reality,” says Sadik-Khan. Improving reliability matters as much as cost, she says. “New Yorkers don’t just want more affordable transit. They want more frequent and reliable service, so they’re not rolling the dice every time they go to and from work,” she says. Other than dedicated bus lanes, other tweaks to street design could help improve speeds, including “bulb-out” bus stops that allow buses to pick up passengers without pulling over to the side of the road. The city can also roll out more traffic signals that give buses priority at lights. To improve the experience of biking, Sadik-Khan says that the city needs to find a way to deal with the surge of e-bikes and scooters that are too fast for bike lanes now. Mamdani could consider a new type of bike lane, she says. “New York City could be the first in the nation to dedicate lanes on avenues and in crosstown streets to faster bikes and scooters, which would take them out of the way for regular bike riders and pedestrians and make the streets much safer for everybody,” she says. Mamdani wants to pedestrianize “vast swaths” of the new congestion pricing zone, along with streets near public open space and schools. It’s an ambitious vision, though not impossible. Paris has transformed even more radically than New York, turning a highway into park space, planting tens of thousands of parking spaces with trees, closing more than 100 streets to cars, charging SUVs extra to park, and making rush hour look more like Copenhagen, with streets filled with bikes. Other cities have also reshaped around pedestrians, like Barcelona, which now has several car-free superblocks. The same scale of change could happen in New York. “There’s absolutely no reason we couldn’t do it here,” says Sadik-Kahn. “We have all of the scaffolding for it. I think it’s really a matter of imagination and implementation.” Even after years of improvements in New York, it’s still a challenge to get support for new bike lanes and other changes. But Mamdani has one key advantage: he’s skilled at communicating a vision. “I think he’s done an extraordinary job of communicating the importance of change in this election,” she says. “He’s definitely laid things out. And now I think the implementation is the next step.”
Category:
E-Commerce
The world’s richest man was just handed a chance to become history’s first trillionaire.Elon Musk won a shareholder vote on Thursday that would give the Tesla CEO stock worth $1 trillion if he hits certain performance targets over the next decade. The vote followed weeks of debate over his management record at the electric car maker and whether anyone deserved such unprecedented pay, drawing heated commentary from small investors to giant pension funds and even the pope.In the end, more than 75% of voters approved the plan as shareholders gathered in Austin, Texas, for their annual meeting.“Fantastic group of shareholders,” Musk said after the final vote was tallied, adding “Hang on to your Tesla stock.”The vote is a resounding victory for Musk showing investors still have faith in him as Tesla struggles with plunging sales, market share and profits in no small part due to Musk himself. Car buyers fled the company this year as he has ventured into politics both in the U.S. and Europe, and trafficked in conspiracy theories.The vote came just three days after a report from Europe showing Tesla car sales plunged again last month, including a 50% collapse in Germany.Still, many Tesla investors consider Musk as a sort of miracle man capable of stunning business feats, such as when he pulled Tesla from the brink of bankruptcy a half-dozen years ago to turn it into one of the world’s most valuable companies.The vote clears a path for Musk to become a trillionaire by granting him new shares, but it won’t be easy. The board of directors that designed the pay package require him to hit several ambitious financial and operational targets, including increasing the value of the company on the stock market nearly six times its current level.Musk also has to deliver 20 million Tesla electric vehicles to the market over 10 years amid new, stiff competition, more than double the number since the founding of the company. He also has to deploy 1 million of his human-like robots that he has promised will transform work and home he calls it a “robot army” from zero today.Musk could add billions to his wealth in a few years by partly delivering these goals, according to various intermediate steps that will hand him newly created stock in the company as he nears the ultimate targets.That could help him eventually top what is now considered America’s all-time richest man, John D. Rockefeller. The oil titan is estimated by Guinness World Records to have been worth $630 billion, in current dollars, at his peak wealth more than 110 years ago. Musk is worth $493 billion, as estimated by Forbes magazine.Musk’s win came despite opposition from several large funds, including CalPERS, the biggest U.S. public pension, and Norway’s sovereign wealth fund. Two corporate watchdogs, Institutional Shareholder Services and Glass Lewis, also blasted the package, which so angered Musk he took to calling them “corporate terrorists” at a recent investor meeting.Critics argued that the board of directors was too beholden to Musk, his behavior too reckless lately and the riches offered too much.“He has hundreds of billions of dollars already in the company and to say that he won’t stay without a trillion is ridiculous,” said Sam Abuelsamid, an analyst at research firm Telemetry who has been covering Tesla for nearly two decades. “It’s absurd that shareholders think he is worth this much.”Supporters said that Musk needed to be incentivized to focus on the company as he works to transform it into an AI powerhouse using software to operate hundreds of thousands of self-driving Tesla cars many without steering wheels and Tesla robots deployed in offices, factories and homes doing many tasks now handled by humans.“This AI chapter needs one person to lead it and that’s Musk,” said financial analyst Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities. “It’s a huge win for shareholders.”Investors voting for the pay had to consider not only this Musk promise of a bold, new tomorrow, but whether he could ruin things today: He had threatened to walk away from the company, which investors feared would tank the stock.Tesla shares, already up 80% in the past year, rose on news of the vote in after-hours trading but then flattened basically unchanged to $445.44.For his part, Musk says the vote wasn’t really about the money but getting a higher Tesla stake it will double to nearly 30% so he could have more power over the company. He said that was a pressing concern given Tesla’s future “robot army” that he suggested he didn’t trust anyone else to control given the possible danger to humanity.Other issues up for a vote at the annual meeting turned out wins for Musk, too.Shareholders approved allowing Tesla to invest in one of Musk’s other ventures, xAI. They also shot down a proposal to make it easier for shareholders to sue the company by lowering the size of ownership needed to file. The current rule requires at least a 3% stake.-This story corrects that Rockefeller wealth was in oil, not railroads. Bernard Condon, Associated Press
Category:
E-Commerce
All news |
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||