Michael Alistair Findlay is an art dealer and author residing in New York City. Findlay is a Director of Acquavella Galleries, which specializes in Impressionist and Modern European works of art as well as Post-War American painting and sculpture. Findlay is also the author of two books, The Value of Art: Money, Power, Beauty and Seeing Slowly: Looking at Modern Art.
As a Director of Richard Feigen Gallery from 1964 - 1970, Findlay ran Feigen Downtown, one of the first galleries to open in SoHo. In 1970 he established his own SoHo gallery, J.H. Duffy and Sons Ltd., which he ran until 1977. He was the first dealer in the United States to exhibit the work of Sean Scully and Joseph Beuys. He gave American artists Hannah Wilke, John Baldessari, Stephen Mueller and Billy Sullivan their first solo exhibitions in New York. He also represented Abstract ExpressionistRay Parker. During this time Findlay also bought and sold Impressionist and Twentieth century works of art on behalf of American and European private collectors. He also secured early portrait commissions of Dennis Hopper and others for Andy Warhol.
Findlay joined Christie's auction house in 1984 and was the Head of the Impressionist and Modern Art Department until 1992. From 1992 until 2000 he was the International Director of Fine Arts and a member of Christie's Board of Directors. During his tenure at Christie's he was instrumental in the sale of various important collections, including Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, Victor and Sally Ganz and Hal B. Wallis. In 1990 he supervised the sale of Dr. Gachet by Vincent Van Gogh for $82,500,000, which at the time was the highest price paid for a work of art at auction. Findlay opened the Christie's office in Shanghai in 1994 with an exhibition of Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary masterpieces. In 1995 he was part of a small team that advised the new Shanghai Museum in the creation of a Western art program. Findlay retired from Christie's in 2000.
Personal Life
Findlay married African American model Naomi Sims in 1973. Sims was the first black model to grace the cover of a mainstream American women's magazine, Ladies Home Journal.
Published works
Findlay has published essays and art criticism in magazines and exhibition catalogues and has been writing and publishing poetry since the 1960s when he read in venues like The Judson Church and The Metro Café with Ann Waldman, Gerard Malanga, Barbara Holland and others. He studied poetry with Jean Valentine, June Jordan and Kenneth Koch and his work appears in poetry magazines most recently Lalitamba and Cloudbank 11. He is a contributing author of “The Expert versus The Object: Judging Fakes and False Attributions in the Visual Arts” edited by Ronald Spencer and published by Oxford University Press in 2004. His book, “The Value of Art: Money, Power, Beauty”, was published by Prestel in 2012, and has been translated into German, Spanish, Japanese and Korean. His second book, “Seeing Slowly: Looking At Modern Art” was published in August of 2017.
