Bonhams has a new front door in New York, and it is not subtle.
This week, the 232-year-old auction house opened its new U.S. headquarters at 111 West 57th Street, inside the restored Steinway Hall and beneath the pencil-thin tower that now looms over Billionaires’ Row. The move shifts Bonhams from its longtime Madison Avenue base into a 42,000 square foot space that feels more like a cultural center than a back-office salesroom.
The building does much of the talking. Visitors enter through an 80-foot glass atrium that opens onto a grand staircase, a triple-height gallery, and two sizable auction rooms. The historic Steinway Rotunda has been restored and folded into the mix, giving the place a sense of old New York glamour without feeling dusty. It is polished, vertical, and designed to be seen from the street, encouraging passersby to look in and actually glimpse what is happening.
Bonhams is using the opening month to show off more than square footage.
In the atrium, an exhibition titled “Striking a Chord” brings together 20th- and 21st-century heavyweights, including a rare Constantin Brancusi sculpture, La Muse endormie II, alongside works by Francis Bacon, Lee Krasner, and John Chamberlain. The theme riffs on the building’s Steinway history, leaning into the idea that art can hit you like a piece of music. It makes clear that Bonhams wants to play confidently in the blue-chip arena.
Down in the Rotunda, a 1910 Steinway Model B grand piano, played by Elton John during the recording of his 1974 album Caribou, sits like a gilded rock-star relic. Estimated at $250,000 to $350,000, it will anchor a series of guest performances before heading to a spring online sale. It is part music history, part trophy lot, and exactly the kind of crossover object that blurs the line between auction preview and exhibition.
Mariano Rodríguez, El desayuno (The Breakfast), 1943
Then there is the Cuban art show.
“Modern Cuban Painters from Havana to New York” revisits the Museum of Modern Art’s 1944 exhibition that introduced Cuban modernism to U.S. audiences. The presentation reunites works not seen together in decades, including paintings by Wifredo Lam, Mariano Rodríguez, Amelia Peláez, Mario Carreño, and Cundo Bermúdez. The historical framing gives the show real weight and underscores Bonhams’s push into scholarship as well as sales.
Elsewhere in the building, a preview of works from the collection of New York dealer Evan Lobel nods to postwar design history, with pieces by Philip and Kelvin LaVerne, Karl Springer, Stephen Rolfe Powell, and a diamond-dust Andy Warhol portrait of Sid Bass.
And for those who prefer their cultural heritage with gloves and trunks, Bonhams is also staging “Heavyweights & Headliners: Legends in Sports and Rock,” featuring material from photographer George Kalinsky’s collection. Think boxing legends, arena lights, and the mythology of American sport, sharing space with fine art and modern design. There are even signed gloves and robes from Joe Frazier vs. Muhammad Ali at Madison Square Garden in 1971, which was billed as “The Fight of the Century”.
All of it adds up to something more ambitious than a change of address. Bonhams is betting that collectors want an experience, not just a paddle number.
The comparison to Sotheby’s move to the Breuer building is unavoidable. Sotheby’s planted itself in a former museum with architectural pedigree, signaling institutional heft and scale. Bonhams, by contrast, has chosen the heart of 57th Street, where luxury towers and legacy brands compete for attention. If Sotheby’s leaned into the museum model, Bonhams is leaning into the idea of a cultural hub that happens to sell everything from Brancusi to boxing memorabilia.
The real test will be whether the crowds follow the opening-week buzz fades. For now, though, Bonhams has given itself a stage on a stretch of Manhattan where visibility most certainly matters.
