The auction house on Friday announced a redesign and expansion of its headquarters on the Upper East Side that is being led by designer Shohei Shigematsu of the Rem Koolhaas-founded firm OMA. The exhibition space there will grow to over 90,000 square feet from 67,000, and the project will include the addition of several new galleries, which will open May 3.
The goal, Shigematsu explained in a phone interview, is to make “a series of different size and different height rooms that really create a diversity of gallery space.”
Among the new galleries are nine for discreet private sales and one dedicated to small-scale objects, like jewelry and watches. Three, two-story spaces will be set aside for exhibitions, as well as a 150-foot-long space intended to showcase full collections. The redesign will also add a coffee bar to the lobby.
The auction house says that the expansion is costing them about $55 million. And the project comes at a time of apparent financial stoutness for Sotheby’s, which said its auction sales totaled $5.3 billion last year — a 12 percent increase over 2017, according to the auction house. It’s also a time of change for them; the house announced in December that its chief operating officer, Adam Chinn, would be stepping down.
When the expansion is unveiled, it will come alongside an auction of impressionist, modern and contemporary art that includes Mark Rothko’s “Untitled” (1960). That work, a color field painting of burgundy oil on canvas, caused a stir this month when the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art announced plans to sell it and put the proceeds toward efforts to diversify its holdings.
The buzz surrounding the auction of the Rothko is convenient for Sotheby’s, which will now have an elaborate new space to show it off in. The sale is on May 16.
One of the more unusual characteristics of the new space, Shigematsu pointed out, is the presence of columns in some of the galleries.
“Columns could be considered a hazard for gallery space,” he said. “But these concrete columns actually show the history of this building.”
“It’s part of the character of the space,” he added.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.