Breuer Bet Pays Off for Sotheby’s

Sotheby’s reaped the benefits of its move into the Breuer. It launched its new HQ in the former Whitney museum building in New York with a $1.2 billion week in November, accounting for more than 40% of its fine art sales for the year.

The autumn rally helped boost its HENI Auction Index grade from a D last year to a C in 2025.

The high point was the sale of Leonard Lauder’s collection was led by his record-breaking Klimt. The portrait of Elisabeth Lederer fetched $236.4m, with fees, becoming the most expensive work of modern art to be sold at auction, and setting a new auction record for the Austrian artist.

Also that week, Frida Kahlo’s record jumped when her self-portrait, El sueño (La cama) (1940), sold for $54.66m with fees in the Exquisite Corpus auction. It was also a record sale for a work by a female artist.

In May, the auction house’s marquee week delivered two white-glove sales from the collections of Barbara Gladstone and Daniella Luxembourg, giving its bottom line, and HENI Auction Index score, a lift.

The unique auction index measures the strength of a sale—or a group of sales—using over ten metrics.

Metrics include sales revenue and total number of lots. In 2025, Sotheby’s sales revenue increased 23% year on year, but remained 36% below average while the number of lots fell 20% and was half the usual number.

The percentages of lots selling above their low and high estimates improved only slightly versus last year and remained 5 and 6 percentage points below average respectively.

Among the positives was the percentage of lots with strong guarantees and irrevocable bids, which was the highest on record. Among them were Lauder’s three Klimts as well a painting by Matisse, a star lot in the Jay and Cindy Pritzker sale held the same November week. Léda et le cygne(1944) sold for $10.4m with fees, 48% above its low estimate, which does not include fees.

A slight increase in the average number of bidders per lot up to 2.7 also helped Sotheby’s rebound to a C.

The average hammer to mid estimate ratio improved from 1.3 to 1.4 but is still below the typical 1.5.

Another welcome metric for the auction house and consignors was a fall in the percentage of lots bought-in, which declined to 17%, significantly below a typical 22%.

Sotheby’s held six white-glove sales in the Breuer’s opening week but it was not all about New York. Pauline Karpidas’s surrealist art and design sold in London in September. It was an outstanding result, with 100% of lots finding buyers in the evening sale, and it scored an A+ on the HENI Auction Index, eclipsing many other major, single-collection sales typically held in Manhattan.

Together, the autumn rally in London and New York propelled Sotheby’s to its strongest year on the HENI Auction Index since 2021.

Methodology: for how the HENI Auction Index classifies sales, see here