In late 1941, Sterne established a studio and apartment on East 50th Street, nearby Peggy Guggenheim's home on Beekman Place. The two became close friends, and through Guggenheim, Sterne met and became reacquainted with many of the Surrealist artists she had known in Paris, including André Breton, Marcel Duchamp, and Max Ernst. Around this time Sterne also met and became close friends with the author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. She would later play a critical role in advising Saint-Exupéry to use his own drawings to illustrate his book "The Little Prince".