Michael Rowe was the winner of the Decorative Arts Award in1988[25] and a detail of the Tapestry Soft Flight by Mary Farmer graced the catalogue cover.

[26] With private transactions constituting an essential and increasingly profitable business segment, through the years Sotheby's has bought art galleries and helped dealers finance purchases.

[30] That decision came right after it was disclosed that Sotheby's had decided to close Emmerich's prime space at 41 East 57th Street, and that its artists would be handled out of Deitch Projects.

[36] Already in 1990, Sotheby's New York had successfully lobbied for a zoning change permitting the construction of a 27-story residential tower above the five-story headquarters; this expansion was never realised.

[38] In May 2007, Sotheby's opened an office in Moscow in response to rapidly growing interest among Russian buyers in the international art market and held sales in Qatar in 2009.

[42] In 2009, art collector Steven A. Cohen built a 6 percent stake in the auction house for his hedge fund SAC Capital Advisors.

[44][45] Two years later, Sotheby's closed Noortmans, after having written down $8.3 million of inventory and started selling off lower-valued works of art through other auction houses.

[citation needed] Sotheby's shares a rivalry with Christie's for the position of the world's pre-eminent fine art auctioneer, a title of much subjectivity.

In August 2004, Sotheby's introduced an online system – MySotheby's – allowing clients to track lots and create "wishlists" that could be automatically updated as new works became available.

[50] In March 2015, Tad Smith, former president and chief executive of New York's Madison Square Garden,[51] succeeded William F. Ruprecht as CEO of Sotheby's.

[54] In 2016, the company spent $50 million on Art Agency Partners, run by Amy Cappellazzo, Allan Schwartzman and Adam Chinn.

[58] In February 2019, Sotheby's announced a redesign and expansion of its New York headquarters on the Upper East Side that is being led by the designer Shohei Shigematsu of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA).

[65] In June 2023, Sotheby's agreed to purchase 945 Madison Avenue, a former museum building designed by Marcel Breuer, to house the company's headquarters, including its galleries, exhibition space, and auction room.

[73] In 2024 the Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund ADIA acquired a minority stake in Sotheby's, with a total investment of approximately $1 billion in the house.

Buyers can find out what is for sale at Sotheby's by browsing e-catalogues, visiting pre-sale exhibitions, purchasing print catalogues and registering for e-mail alerts.

[80] That year, Sotheby's inaugurated a new gallery space called S2 at its York Avenue headquarters with a show of work by American abstract painter Sam Francis.

[83] The auction house also makes term loans, for a defined period of time, on works that clients are not planning to sell, in part to "establish or enhance mutually beneficial relationships with borrowers" that can lead to future consignments.

[84] While traditional lenders such as banks provide loans at a lower cost to borrowers, Sotheby's said in its 2011 annual report, few will accept works of art as the sole collateral.

[126] In 1991 & 1997, an edition of ITV's The Cook Report and Channel 4 Dispatches programme alleged that Sotheby's had been trading in antiquities with no published provenance, and that the organisation continued to use dealers involved in the smuggling of artefacts.

Lynch travelled to India frequently and bought unprovenanced pieces from Vaman Ghiya in Rajasthan, which turned out to be stolen from temples and other sites.

British historian and journalist Peter Watson wrote Sotheby's: The Inside Story (1997), outlining these illicit activities, which he also exposed on CBS's 60 Minutes.

As a result of this exposé, Sotheby's commissioned their own report into illegal antiquities, and made assurances that only legal items with published provenance would be traded in the future.

[139][140] Growing out of the four-year criminal antitrust investigation by the United States Department of Justice, some 130,000 buyers and sellers filed class-action lawsuit, arguing they were cheated in the price-fixing conspiracy by Sotheby's and Christie's.

[148] From October 2013 to May 2014, Sotheby's was the target of activist investor Daniel S. Loeb via his hedge fund Third Point Management, which owned the largest shareholder stake in the publicly traded company.

[149][150] Loeb criticized a number of the company's strategies and managerial practices,[151][152][153] asked for three seats (himself, Harry Wilson, and Olivier Reza) on the board of directors,[154] and demanded the resignation of chairman and CEO Bill Ruprecht.

[155][156] By April 2014, hedge fund Marcato Capital Management and investor advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services also supported most of Loeb's positions.

In early 2015, the UVW union initiated a formal trade dispute over low pay, insufficient sick pay, and issues summarised in an Early Day Motion signed by 24 Members of Parliament, highlighting:[158]the unwarranted suspension of a porter following a grievance he made about poor treatment, the refusal to stop using certain chemicals which leave cleaners with breathing difficulties, chest pains and rashes, the unwarranted deduction of wages and working hours, overworking and shouting at porters and cleaners, reprimanding a porter for using the toilet outside his official break time, threatening a cleaner with suspension for not being clean shavenAfter CCML conceded the majority of UVW's demands, Sotheby's decided to contract all support services to a new company, Servest.

This backfired when UVW staged a noisy, sit-down protest outside the Sotheby's entrance[159] while clients arrived for a record-breaking summer night of contemporary art auctions, including lots by Andy Warhol and Francis Bacon.

"[123][167] Sotheby's filed a preemptive lawsuit stating it had complied with all applicable rules and regulations, and the dispute between the auction house and the art dealers was settled quietly out of court.

Francis of Paola Holding a Rosary, Book, and Staff” was looted from the Jewish art dealer Otto Fröhlich, and his heirs identified the artwork at Sotheby's.