Sotheby's

Photo by Glenda Altarejos on Wikimedia

June 2, 2023

Sotheby’s buys the Breuer Building from Whitney Museum

The Whitney Museum of Art has sold the Upper East Side's iconic Breuer Building to the auction house Sotheby's. Designed by renowned architect Marcel Breuer in 1966, the five-story building at 945 Madison Avenue is known for its striking Brutalist architecture. While the exact price of the transaction remains unknown, sources close to the deal suggest it was around $100 million, according to the New York Times. Sotheby's will take over the building next September from the Frick Collection, which has operated there temporarily since 2021, and relocate its headquarters from York Avenue to the Breuer in 2025.
Details here

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A Keith Haring mural that has been out of public view for 30 years will be auctioned for charity

Photo courtesy of Sotheby’s; ‘Mural for The Mount Sinai Hospital, New York’ by Keith Haring

November 8, 2022

A Keith Haring mural that has been out of public view for 30 years will be auctioned for charity

By Aaron Ginsburg

A forgotten Keith Haring mural that has sat in storage for over 30 years is being shown in public for the first time and auctioned off for charity. Created in 1986 by the legendary pop artist, Haring drew the mural within the Mount Sinai Kravis Children's Hospital to instill hope in the young patients who were staying in the facility, as first reported by Time Out NY. The building was torn down in 1989 to make space for the Guggenheim Pavilion, but the mural was saved and placed in storage.
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Events & Things To Do

Sotheby’s hip hop auction includes Biggie Smalls’ crown from ‘King of New York’ photo & more gems

Salt-N-Pepa’s “Push It” leather jackets; Photo courtesy of Sotheby’s

September 11, 2020

Sotheby’s hip hop auction includes Biggie Smalls’ crown from ‘King of New York’ photo & more gems

By Devin Gannon

Next week, Sotheby's will host its first-ever hip hop auction with iconic memorabilia from the music movement that got its start in New York City. One of the biggest items of the auction, which will be held live on September 15, is the crown worn by Brooklyn-born Biggie Smalls during the 1997 "King of New York" photo shoot, the last portrait of the rapper before he was killed just days later. Another amazing item at the auction includes over 20 love letters penned by a 16-year-old Tupac Shakur to his high school sweetheart.
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Keith Haring’s personal art collection will be auctioned off to raise money for NYC’s LGBTQ Center

Photo via Nationaal Archief / Wikimedia Commons

August 28, 2020

Keith Haring’s personal art collection will be auctioned off to raise money for NYC’s LGBTQ Center

By Dana Schulz

On September 24, Sotheby's will open the auction for "Dear Keith: Works from the Personal Collection of Keith Haring." The auction is comprised of more than 140 artworks from Haring's personal collection and is expected to raise close to $1 million, all of which will all go directly to the LGBTQ Community Center. The collection is being donated by the Keith Haring Foundation, which was set up by the artist and activist himself shortly before he passed away from HIV/AIDS in 1990. It includes pieces by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Kenny Scharf, Jenny Holzer, and George Condo.
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Events & Things To Do

February 22, 2019

Sotheby’s announces $55M expansion and redesign of NYC headquarters by Rem Koolhaas’ OMA

By Alexandra Alexa

Renowned auction house Sotheby’s has revealed renderings of its reimagined Upper East Side headquarters, designed by OMA New York’s Shohei Shigematsu. Slated to open on May 3rd to coincide with their auctions of Impressionist & Modern and Contemporary Art, the redesign features 40 galleries across four completely transformed floors and will increase Sotheby’s exhibition space from 67,000 square feet to more than 90,000 (a whopping two acres of space!).
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Architecture And Design

November 2, 2016

Rare collection of Alexander Hamilton’s unpublished letters headed for auction

By Michelle Cohen

Auction house Sotheby's has announced the sale of a rare collection consisting of hundreds of Alexander Hamilton's letters and personal manuscripts held by his family at auction on Jaunary 18. Alexander Hamilton: An Important Family Archive of Letters and Manuscripts will offer a trove that contains, among others, love letters from the first United States Secretary of the Treasury to his wife, Eliza, and the condolence letter, sealed with black wax, that his father-in-law sent to her after Hamilton was killed in the infamous duel with Aaron Burr, the New York Times reports.
Find out more about this rare collection

November 6, 2015

Iconic Plastic Armchair Sells at Sotheby’s Auction for $409,000

By Rebecca Paul

At a recent Sotheby's auction in London, the Miss Blanche armchair, from the Japanese designer Shiro Kuramata, sold for a whopping £269,000 ($409,000 U.S. dollars). The iconic plastic resin chair was named after Blanche Dubois from Tennessee Williams' play "A Streetcar Named Desire" and was created in 1988, three years before the artist's death. The production of the chair was rather complex, as it required each artificial rose to be held in place for long periods of time so the resin could harden around it. The artist also experimented with using actual roses, but the acrylic resin ruined the flowers before setting. Ultimately it was decided that "fake" materials were more appropriate because Blanch Dubois was in fact superficial.
More on the chair

September 17, 2015

This $17.5 Million Co-Op at the Dakota Has Gone Totally Mod!

By Emily Nonko

While many of the apartments at The Dakota, the historic co-op building at 1 West 72nd Street on the Upper West Side, are dripping with historic detail, this one is an anomaly. The four-bedroom unit does retain many of the classic details of these famed apartments—12-foot ceilings, wood-burning fireplaces, floor-to-ceiling windows and grand, well-sized rooms. But it's been significantly renovated with bold, modern design in the kitchen and bedrooms. To have a touch of modernism in one of the most iconic and historic apartment buildings of New York is going to cost you $17.5 million. The unit last sold in 2010, for $11.5 million.
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Distinctive Homes

Sotheby’s New York Sale: The Weirdest and Most Wonderful Things That Sold (and Didn’t)

L to R: Massimo Vignelli and Bob Noorda’s original NYC Transit Authority Graphics Standards Manual; Mets Bullpen Cart; Gage Gold Freedom Box

April 2, 2015

Sotheby’s New York Sale: The Weirdest and Most Wonderful Things That Sold (and Didn’t)

By Dana Schulz

The highly anticipated New York Sale, an online auction hosted by eBay and Sotheby's, took place yesterday. The first platform of its kind, the sale offered 91 NYC-related lots, including many photographs and artworks, as well as rare city mementos like Andy Warhol's 1963 lease for his first studio on 87th Street (which sold for $13,750, over the $12,000 high-end estimate). Not only does the auction site feature pricing information for the items, but it offers thorough descriptions and historic information about them, accompanied by relevant media. In total, the sale raked in $2,101,814 for Sotheby's, with the most expensive item being a replica of Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi's clay model of "La liberté éclairant le monde"(the Statue of Liberty) that sold for $970,000. Other top sellers include a gold "freedom box," the Mets Bullpen Cart, and a Tiffany & Co. silver Art Deco cigar box.
See all the top sales and those that didn't make the cut here

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