But when I was walking through the Breuer lobby, I thought, Who makes the cut? Sotheby’s on York Avenue had space for more than 500 people in the salesroom. In the new salesroom of the Breuer Building, simply due to the size of each floor, there were around 195 seats. It was a tight crew. Not everyone was getting in.
So who did? I spotted, on an aisle a few rows back, Larry Gagosian, who’s had a gallery a block up on Madison since 1989 and will soon unveil a new space on the ground floor, right next to his still-great sushi joint, Kappo Masa. The adviser Philippe Ségalot was toward the front. The Nahmad family sat in the very front row—Joe Nahmad has a gallery at 980 Madison, and Helly Nahmad has a space at 975 Madison. Dominique Lévy, Brett Gorvy, and Amalia Dayan—they have a gallery off Madison, in the 60s, and were seated toward the center of the action. Emmanuel Di Donna, another local gallerist, was there as well.
Ryan Murphy was there with his adviser Joe Sheftel, and Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn, the collector who in 2002 founded the Salon 94 gallery a few blocks up, sat toward the back.
The Mugrabi family, dealers and collectors both, were right in the middle: David Mugrabi, Tico Mugrabi, and the patriarch, Jose Mugrabi. And there was the house diaspora, the alum who left the citadel to set up their own shops. Former Christie’s global chairman Jussi Pylkkänen, now a private dealer, arrived one lot late and hung out in the back until security whisked him to his seat. Former Sotheby’s rainmaker Amy Cappellazzo was in the front row, left flank; former Sotheby’s contemporary art chairman Gabriela Palmieri was seated in the center; and Patti Wong, the house’s former Asia chairman, was in a chair on the aisle. Noah Horowitz, who left Sotheby’s in 2023 to become CEO of Art Basel, was there as well.
But it was a tight squeeze.
“You know what I had to do to get a ticket?” said one collector standing by a man serving Champagne, free of course, by the back of the salesroom. “It was extraordinary.”
