The Groove 249 - From Whitney Museum to Winning Bids
Welcome to the 248th issue of The Groove.
I am Maria Brito, an art advisor, curator, and author based in New York City.
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FROM WHITNEY MUSEUM TO WINNING BIDS
Frida Kahlo, El Sueño (La Cama), 1940, has resurfaced for the first time in 30 years and it will be auctioned at Sotheby’s on November 20th. The estimate is $40 to $60 million.
The 281-year-old Sotheby’s just opened its new global headquarters in the old Whitney Museum building and turned the whole place into a stage gallery, with its hallways and even the paths to the bathrooms lined with art. The famously hated Brutalist masterpiece of architect Marcel Breuer is once again hosting spectacular art on its walls - albeit under a commercial enterprise - for the first time in its almost sixty years of existence after Sotheby’s bought the building for $100 million in June 2023 while The Frick Collection occupied the space temporarily until their own renovations were completed.
On view: various standout Klimts that belonged to the late Leonard Lauder, a big rare Van Gogh, a Frida Kahlo masterpiece that hasn’t been seen in 30 years, and Maurizio Cattelan’s infamous gold toilet gleaming like a punchline. It felt less like a showroom and more like a public dress rehearsal: masterpieces stretching before their market entrance.
For better or worse, auction houses are the only places in the art world where prices are published and visible to everyone. Is that elitist? Only if you ignore the information because you can’t stand the market. For one week, anyone can walk into a landmarked building designed for modern art and see museum-grade works with price tags at zero cost. It’s a spectacle of capitalism and a crash course in looking and learning.
What the Wall Label Is Really Telling You
At first glance, the tag is just biography: artist, title, date, medium, size and estimate price. Look again and it’s a tidy bundle of market intelligence. Use the QR code too if you want to go straight to the page that delves into provenance, historical context and, if you are inclined, a registration page for bidding.
The sale context (“Evening Sale” versus “Day Sale,” or a named single-owner collection) underscores status and expected competition. The estimate band isn’t a guess, but an anchor that bakes in scarcity, period quality, condition, fresh-to-market glow, and crucially, recent comps.
When you see a de Chirico at $3–4 million while a floor away, a Picasso ceramic plate is valued at $7–10k, you’re not just seeing different price points but understanding how artists, periods, mediums, and moments clear at radically different levels. (By the way, auction houses always estimate on the conservative side to encourage bidding.)
Watch the hierarchies by floor. Evening-sale rooms stretch out: fewer objects, more air, higher estimates, works that ask for space because they already command it. Day-sale floors are denser and chattier: more frames, more lots, smaller things, more discovery. Same building, two dialects of price.
From Breuer to Bazaar
Museums confer meaning and hide cost; auctions display both. For once, the public can stand inches from a painting that would be a headline loan in any institution and read, in black and white, what the market thinks it is worth right now.
Think of it as price discovery gone public. The old Breuer building has always been a place for looking. Now it’s also a place for learning how value is made.
These galleries are open to anyone; you can walk off Madison Avenue and stand in front of a Van Gogh or a Klimt with an estimate that would fund a wing at any museum. A few steps away, a Kerry James Marshall carries an eight-figure band. It’s a snapshot of the broader market: taste, history, and money negotiating in public.
A Masterclass in Collecting
A section of the evening sale offers a glimpse into one of the most beautiful collections I’ve ever seen. Exquisite Corpus is what disciplined art-buying looks like: a clear thesis (Surrealism’s dream-logic across artists and mediums) bought consistently over time, at period quality.
This is not a “who’s hot” scrapbook. Frida Kahlo’s El Sueño (La Cama) whose estimate is $40 to $60 million is anchoring a world where Delvaux, Dorothea Tanning, Magritte, de Chirico, Max Ernst, Jean Arp and Remedios Varo actually talk to one another.
This works so well because there’s coherence and depth. The headliners are there, but so is the connective tissue, the works that make the argument legible. You feel chronology and variation of icons, outliers, and quietly great pictures - not just brand names. That’s why it takes your breath away: the whole is greater than the sum of the lots.
How To Use This Place (Collector or Not)
Give yourself one hour. Don’t chase names but ask questions. Why does the Frida Kahlo carry a $40–60 million estimate while another surrealist stalls at a fraction of that? What does “fresh to market” mean when a work hasn’t surfaced for decades? Where does provenance, like coming from the collection of Ronald Lauder, or Cindy and Jay Pritzker, add a multiplier?
If you’re building a collection, compare estimates to recent results before you fall in love. If you’re building an eye, compare what the tag implies to what the work delivers.
This is a place to train your eye and understand what moves the needle in the art world. Learn how collectors shape taste and legacies. Auction houses have long published prices. Is it truly democratic at these levels? Not really. But the information is. Use it to your advantage: read the estimates, note the periods and provenance, compare across floors and sharpen your judgment for when it’s your money on the wall.