Sotheby's Debuts New Galleries On Upper East Side

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — Auction house Sotheby's has completed an ambitious renovation of its Upper East Side building and recently opened dozens of new art galleries to the public, the company announced.

The new galleries opened Friday at Sotheby's global headquarters on York Avenue between East 71st and 72nd Streets, the auction house announced. The redesigned galleries expanded Sotheby's exhibition space from 67,000 square feet to more than 90,000 square feet, a company spokesperson said.

Sotheby's hired architect Shohei Shigematsu of OMA New York to helm the redesign. Shigematsu's design completely transformed four of the auction house's floors into 40 public galleries and nine private sales salons that "rivals major museums around the world in scope, scale, quality and flexibility," a Sotheby's spokesperson said.

"We wanted to embody Sotheby’s ambition to reinvigorate and enhance the client experience by introducing high-flexibility through reorganization of programs and diversification of gallery spaces. The new headquarters is designed for openness and discovery—all public facing programs are shifted to lower levels, unlocking the public potential of the building," Shigematsu said in a statement.

A number of artworks estimated to fetch eight-figure sums at auction are currently on display in Sothebys's new public galleries. These works include Cloud Monet's "Haystacks," an untitled Mark Rothko painting from 1960 and Francis Bacon's "Screaming Pope." A number of these paintings will headline upcoming auctions at Sotheby's, according to a press release.

The new galleries debuted with more than 1,400 artworks on display, the auction house announced.

"Our ambition was to completely re imagine the client experience in our building – from arrival into our lobby, and the path taken to view an exhibition and participate in an auction, through to collecting new purchases," Sotheby's CEO Tad Smith said in a statement.