George Condo, The Day They All Got Out. Courtesy of Sotheby’s.
In mid-October, as Art Basel Paris brings the international art world back to the French capital, Sotheby’s will take over a private Parisian apartment overlooking the Jardin des Tuileries.
Inside, almost $150 million worth of art will be on display.
Works by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Andy Warhol, Gerhard Richter and Francis Bacon will hang alongside Italian food, French desserts and cocktails created by Colin Field, the former head bartender of the legendary Hemingway Bar at the Ritz Paris.
The name of the exhibition is Chez Sotheby’s.
It is Sotheby’s latest attempt to make private art sales feel less private, turning the traditional transaction into something closer to an experience.
From private sale to cultural experience
Chez Sotheby’s follows The Apartment, an invitation-only selling exhibition first presented by Sotheby’s in London.
When the second edition opened in March, around $40 million worth of art was displayed inside an elegant boardroom alongside furniture by Rose Uniacke. Visitors could see works by artists including David Hockney, George Condo, Gerhard Richter and Jean-Michel Basquiat.
Around half of the works eventually sold.
The concept is now moving to Paris on a much larger scale.
David Rothschild, Sotheby’s global lead for private sales exhibitions, is behind the project. The Paris space is roughly four times larger than the London apartment, with an inventory almost four times as valuable.
“The space in Paris is quadruple the size of The Apartment you saw in London, hence quadruple the value,” Rothschild tells The Art Journal.
The success of the London exhibitions, he says, gave Sotheby’s the confidence to create something more ambitious.
But there is an important distinction.
Sotheby’s does not see Chez Sotheby’s as a replacement for its auctions. Instead, it is presenting private sales as another way of buying and selling art: more personal, more controlled and increasingly experiential.
“We are not intentionally moving business away from auction,” Rothschild says. The aim is to offer collectors “a different product, a bespoke way or unique opportunity to sell or to buy.”
Why private sales are growing
The shift comes at a time when the traditional art market has become more uncertain.
The major auction houses have all expanded their private-sales businesses in recent years.
Sotheby’s private sales grew from around $1 billion in 2019 to $1.2 billion in 2025. Christie’s increased from roughly $800 million to $1.5 billion over the same period. At Phillips, private sales rose 66% in 2025 compared with the previous year.
The appeal is relatively simple.
An auction creates a public result. A work is offered at a certain estimate, collectors compete, and the final price becomes part of the public record.
A private sale works differently.
The seller knows the price in advance. There is no public bidding war and no risk of watching a valuable work sell below expectations in front of the entire market.
For collectors and sellers navigating an uncertain market, that security can be extremely attractive.
But Chez Sotheby’s introduces another element: experience.
Art, food and the luxury experience
The exhibition was created in partnership with _POLIMENO, a creative consultancy and studio working across art, design, culture and hospitality.
Rather than simply walking into a gallery and looking at paintings on white walls, visitors will enter a carefully designed environment where art, architecture, food and hospitality exist together.
Lunch can be enjoyed alongside a Picasso.
A cocktail can be served beneath a Richter.
A painting worth millions becomes part of an evening rather than simply an object hanging on a wall.
This approach reflects a much broader change in the luxury world.
Luxury brands are increasingly selling more than products. They are selling access, atmosphere, stories and memories.
Sotheby’s is applying the same idea to the art market.
“Global consumers across all luxury markets desire experiences,” Rothschild says. “Chez Sotheby’s is precisely that.”
Wayne Thiebaud, Sucker Tree, 1962. Courtesy of Sotheby’s.
A very Parisian idea
There is also something distinctly Parisian about the concept.
Chez Sotheby’s takes inspiration from historic homes, restaurants and hotels where artists, collectors, designers and cultural figures once met.
Names such as Marie-Laure de Noailles, Jacqueline de Ribes and Charles de Beistegui are part of that history, as are places such as Le Palace and Le Mathis.
These spaces were never simply places to look at art.
They were places where culture happened.
That idea is central to the new Sotheby’s concept: art does not have to exist separately from the rest of life.
Christie’s has been exploring a similar direction.
Earlier this year, the auction house presented Ghost Pavilion: A Venice Revealed, an invitation-only selling exhibition inside the Palazzo Ca’ Dario during the opening of the Venice Biennale.
Works by J. M. W. Turner, Édouard Manet and Titian were presented alongside contemporary artists such as Andy Warhol, Louise Bourgeois and Mark Bradford.
The setting itself became part of the experience.
The question of transparency
There is, however, a larger question behind the rise of private sales.
Auctions make the art market visible.
When a painting sells for $20 million, $50 million or $100 million, everyone can see the result. The price becomes part of the public history of the artwork.
Private sales are different.
Prices are often confidential, making it harder for outsiders to understand exactly how much major works are changing hands for.
As more important works move through private channels, that distinction becomes increasingly relevant.
Rothschild does not believe the growth of private sales will make the market significantly less transparent.
He points out that auction volumes remain substantially larger than private sales across most price levels.
And ultimately, collectors want choice.
Some prefer the excitement and visibility of an auction. Others prefer the privacy and certainty of a negotiated sale.
Many want the ability to do both.
A new generation of collections
There is another reason private sales are becoming increasingly important: a huge amount of important art is returning to the market.
As wealth passes between generations, major collections are being sold.
Sotheby’s has recently handled collections belonging to Leonard A. Lauder, Robert Mnuchin, Emily Fisher Landau, Pauline Karpidas, the Lewis Collection and Sydell Miller.
This autumn, the house will also offer works from the personal collection of Pop artist Roy Lichtenstein and his wife Dorothy in New York, alongside 44 works on paper from the collection of German industrialist Count Duerckheim in London.
In these sales, provenance can be just as powerful as the artwork itself.
A painting with a remarkable history can carry an additional layer of meaning, prestige and demand.
“Exceptional provenance continues to drive demand,” Rothschild says. “These landmark collections consistently achieve some of the most significant results in the market.”
The future of buying art
Chez Sotheby’s is unlikely to replace the auction room.
And Sotheby’s does not appear to want it to.
Instead, the two models are beginning to exist alongside each other.
The auction offers competition, visibility and public price discovery.
The private sale offers discretion, certainty and a more controlled environment.
Chez Sotheby’s adds something else entirely: atmosphere.
For a market built around objects, this represents an interesting shift.
The artwork is still the centre of everything. But the way people encounter it is changing.
A painting can now be experienced over lunch, discussed over cocktails, discovered inside a private apartment or encountered as part of a carefully constructed cultural environment.
Perhaps that is where the art market is heading.
Not simply towards selling art, but towards creating a world around it.
And in Paris, Sotheby’s is betting that the world surrounding the artwork can be almost as powerful as the artwork itself.
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