Auction houses are rebranding as cultural destinations amid a topsy-turvy market

By Jacqui Palumbo, CNN

New York (CNN) — At the base of the world’s most slender skyscraper, stretching high above Billionaires’ Row in Manhattan, Bonhams will relocate its American headquarters next month. The auction house leaves behind its more cloistered Madison Avenue home for airy galleries in an 80-foot glass atrium, as well as an opulent neoclassical rotunda in the historic Steinway Hall.

It’s a move that follows on the heels of Sotheby’s transformation of the Breuer Building, just one mile north, displaying coveted high-priced treasures in a space that has long functioned as a museum.

Both represent a push for auction houses to bring in the public, drawing them in with larger exhibitions, as well as their proximity to famed institutions such as Carnegie Hall or the many others that stretch up Museum Mile.

“It’s often said that auction houses are such a mystery behind doors, but we want to be approachable. People can just walk in,” said Lilly Chan, the managing director of Bonhams US, while showing the new space under construction. “We really want to make this space a cultural destination.”

Bonhams occupies what’s defined as the mid-range market, mostly offering lots priced between $50,000 to $1 million, while the top three — Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Phillips — court sellers and buyers at the vertiginous top end. With the new headquarters, Chan explained, Bonhams hope to widen their base of collectors through their larger exhibition space and programming around how to start or improve a collection across art, jewelry, antiquities, wine and other collectibles.

“When you walk in, there will be diversity in what you’re going to see,” Chan said. “When new collectors come in, we say that jewelry or watches are the gateway drug to collecting.”

A widening wealth gap

In recent years, auction houses have expanded their categories as luxury goods and collectibles have helped buoy their sales. The art market, in whiplash fashion, experienced pupil-dilating highs just after the pandemic, a lethargic two-year slump, then a sudden multi-billion-dollar rebound in the fall. Entering 2026, the question remains: Are these the signals of a strong, recovering market? Or another extreme swing of the pendulum, guided by the ultrawealthy closing and opening their wallets?

According to a year-end market report by the firm ArtTactic, despite its rosy outlook, the data hints at the latter, as the reverse in fortunes was led by a renewed appetite for $10-million-plus trophy lots at Christie’s and Sotheby’s — most notably, a $236-million Klimt painting. But the momentum extended to the mid-market, too, with Bonhams seeing its strongest week of modern and contemporary art sales to date.

Time will tell if the streak continues, but long term, auction houses have a conundrum to solve. As prices push higher and the wealth gap widens, how many people will be able to afford to buy art?

“Art has become so much more expensive in the last 10 years,” said Saara Pritchard, a New York–based art advisor who previously worked at Christie’s and Sotheby’s. For contemporary art — a category that has faltered for three years after record highs — the artworks and artists who were previously considered the mid-market have rapidly changed, Pritchard explained; collectors who could nab a work from an important established artist can now barely afford works by emerging artists.

“Because art became so expensive so quickly in the contemporary category, it also skipped over a lot of collectors who could have bought really great things,” she said. She paints a picture of a narrowing market, where auction houses and blue-chip galleries chase the same handful of top-spenders, or “whales,” rather than deepening the pool beyond the ultrarich.

Following the money

Over the past few years, auction houses and art fairs have tried to follow the money, focusing their efforts in Asia and, more recently, the Middle East. (During its inaugural collectors’ week in Abu Dhabi, Sotheby’s CEO Charles F. Stewart told CNN the region is “a priority focus.”) In 2020, top auction houses embraced crypto and NFT (nonfungible token) art (which has since fizzled), and eagerly offered up prized sporting goods and Birkins.

“We didn’t have a crystal ball, but it was quite strategic for Bonhams to be in the upper mid segment of the art market,” Chan said. “We sell across 60 categories, because every category goes through their share of fluctuations; if you’re more diverse, you smooth out those fluctuations.”

The art market at large is still showing distress signals, with a spate of brick-and-mortar galleries closing, notable galleries pulling out of art fairs, and US tariffs heavily impacting costs. For the top end, masterpiece segment of the market, there’s a supply issue, too, As Pritchard noted, it has become rarer for a notable Van Gogh or Monet to go on offer. Masterpiece collectors will go dormant for years, she said, waiting it out for the right artwork.

Stewart echoed that sentiment in December, saying “the challenge for the last few years has really been a sourcing challenge.”

Looking ahead, Chan believes that economic pressures will continue, making collectors “more discerning, as they have been this year, about the prices they pay,” she said. “It does make a harder job for all of us across the market to make sure we are really curating the right properties to put our market in auction and at the right prices.”

When their new flagship opens, it will feature two auction rooms and four galleries in the 42,000-square-foot space, with art filling the light-saturated rooms adjacent to the grandeur of the historic Steinway rotunda. There, a Steinway & Sons piano from 1910, used by Elton John, will set the scene until it goes up for sale in May. Also christening the new space will be the sale of the Evan Lobel Collection, featuring more than 200 objects of 20th-century design and works by Andy Warhol, as well as an exhibition of modern Cuban painters including Wifredo Lam and Mario Carreño.

Nearby, Sotheby’s will host its first Masters Week at the Breuer Building; its star lot will be a Rembrandt drawing of a lion estimated to sell between $15-20 million.

It will be a race to obtain trusted, recession-proof works, but Pritchard also believes the barriers for entering the art market need to change to make it sustainable in the long run.

“Everything seems to be getting more expensive, but no one is making more money,” she said.

CNN International producer Yara Enany contributed to this report.

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