Sotheby's is trading the white-walled viewing room for a living room this October. For six days during Art Basel Paris, the auction house is taking over an apartment on Rue de Rivoli, right by the Jardin des Tuileries and a short walk from the Grand Palais, and filling it with close to $150m of art hung like a private home rather than a gallery.
The project, called Chez Sotheby's, runs from October 19 to 24 and is the auction house's most valuable private sales exhibition ever staged in Europe. Works by Picasso, Matisse, Warhol, Gerhard Richter and Francis Bacon sit alongside furniture and design pieces, arranged with creative studio _Polimeno to feel like the eclectic home of a serious collector. Expect strange and satisfying juxtapositions: a Calder next to a Léger, a Picasso near an antiquity. One pairing the curators are excited about hangs a Degas of two ballerinas beside a Cecily Brown painting, since Brown has said she studied Degas closely while making that series.
The hook for visitors without eight figures to spend: there's a restaurant at the centre of it. Designed by Tarek Shamma with a menu from Erika Blu of Atelier Renata, it serves Italian dishes and French desserts, with cocktails overseen by Colin Field, the former head barman of the Hemingway Bar at the Ritz Paris. Lunch among a Bacon is not a typical Tuesday.
Chez Sotheby's is also a sign of where the high-end art market is heading. Sotheby's says collectors increasingly want personal, memorable experiences rather than sterile viewings, and the format builds on what the house has already done elsewhere: Marcel, a restaurant by Roman & Williams, opened inside its new Breuer building headquarters in New York, while its London 'Apartment' series has been staging art in residential settings for two years. The pitch is simple — people live with art around dining tables, not in gallery rooms, so that's where the art should be shown.
Why should a traveller care? Even if you're not in the market for a Richter, this is a rare chance to see museum-grade works in a domestic setting, plus one of Paris's most storied art weeks unfolds around you. During Art Basel Paris the whole city turns into an exhibition — the Grand Palais hosts the main fair, galleries across the Rive Gauche and Marais open special shows, and pop-ups like this one appear in unexpected corners. Time your visit to mid-to-late October and you can pair fair-hopping with long lunches in the Tuileries while the autumn crowds are thinner than high summer.
Entry details for the restaurant and viewings are expected to be managed by appointment, so anyone in Paris that week should check Sotheby's listings ahead of time and book ahead — spaces this intimate tend to fill fast.
