A vacant office floor inside a Midtown Manhattan tower is now filled with sculpture, video and new media work from more than 50 artists, free for anyone to walk in and see. The temporary exhibition at 260 Madison Avenue opened last month on the 14th floor and runs through November 22; a former Duane Reade storefront at street level is set to open as part of the show in mid-October.
The show brings together more than 50 artists and artist collaborations across an entire 23,000-square-foot former office floor on the building's 14th level, which is open, and a former Duane Reade storefront at street level that is set to open in mid-October, according to broadwayworld.com. It was co-curated by artists Dayana Matasheva, Edson Niebla Rodríguez and Shaina Tabak, and it spans sculpture, new media and video work, with participating artists including Matt Mullican, Jon Kessler, Simon Denny, Josh Kline, and Eva & Franco Mattes. As New York Real Estate Journal notes, the building owner, AmTrustRE, is repositioning the 570,000-square-foot Midtown tower, and the exhibition is one piece of that effort.
Visitors can walk in without a ticket: the exhibition is free and open to the public on the 14th floor, with hours Friday through Sunday from noon to 6 p.m. through November 22. The former Duane Reade storefront is set to open in mid-October. The address sits at Madison Avenue and 39th Street, putting the show squarely in the middle of the Midtown office corridor AmTrustRE is trying to reshape.
A Tower Mid-Makeover
260 Madison Avenue is a 22-story, 570,000-square-foot office building undergoing what the same report describes as a comprehensive repositioning. The building's own site describes a full modernization underway, including a complete exterior facade reskin and a redesigned double-height lobby, according to 260mad.com. Separately, AmTrustRE has said it plans to invest significant capital into interior and exterior improvements to the building, per rebusinessonline.com, which also reported the building was roughly 68 percent leased at the time of sale.
Accounts of the purchase price diverge. Mannpublications.com reported that AmTrustRE completed the acquisition of 260 Madison Avenue for $211 million, while Commercial Observer reported the company acquired the building in October 2025 for $217 million. AmTrustRE had already acquired 360 Lexington Avenue, a 24-story, 268,000-square-foot office building in Midtown East, in late 2024, according to mannpublications.com.
Leasing Activity Continues Around the Show
Leasing hasn't stopped at the building during the overhaul. Marcus & Millichap expanded its footprint at 260 Madison Avenue by 5,000 square feet, bringing its total space at the property to 41,000 square feet, as reported by Commercial Observer. The same report put the average Midtown office asking rent at $85.11 per square foot in March, citing CBRE data.
Part of a Broader Pattern
Turning empty commercial space into art venues is becoming a familiar move for both nonprofits and landlords. The nonprofit Site Seen hosts pop-up art exhibitions in vacant commercial spaces across New York and the Hudson Valley, and in June, 51 artists took over an abandoned 9,100-square-foot Dollar General building in Esopus, New York, filling it with paintings, sculpture and site-specific installations, according to the New York Times. That Esopus storefront had sat vacant since the location shuttered in spring 2025.
Office landlords elsewhere have leaned on art for similar reasons, investing tens of millions of dollars in renovations meant to lure tenants back, according to Bisnow. Budgets for corporate art commissions commonly range from $200,000 on the low end into the millions, the outlet reports, and a 2024 Corgan-Hugo study found employees were 17% more productive in enriched environments than in minimalist ones. A Brookfield and Perspectus Global survey cited in the same report found just 24% of workers feel inspired by their job overall, a figure that rose to 39% among those in art-enriched offices.
The stakes for landlords are real: Bisnow reports the national office vacancy rate stands at 18.6%, with prime buildings faring better at 12.7% vacant. Brookfield Properties unveiled a 1,024-square-foot interactive light installation by Pierre Huyghe at One Liberty Plaza as part of a roughly $40 million lobby overhaul, and Silverstein Properties invited 60 graffiti artists to use a floor at 4 World Trade Center as a canvas, a display the outlet says helped convince Spotify to sign a $566 million anchor lease. At Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America's Frisco, Texas headquarters, a separate art project brought more than 170 new pieces into the 15-story building.
Back at 260 Madison, the 14th-floor exhibition remains on view through November 22, with no ticket required for anyone who wants to visit. The former Duane Reade storefront is set to open as part of the show in mid-October.
