Workshop:“How Does A Gallery Find Me?—Art & Business in the 21st Century” with Michael Findlay, Director of Acquavella Galleries
Monday, September 26, 2016, 6:00 PM – 7:00 PM as part of Doctor’s Hours for Visual Artists programming
New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) is pleased to host How Does A Gallery Find Me?—Art & Business in the 21st Century with Michael Findlay, Director of Acquavella Galleries. Based on his personal experience, Findlay will take a fifty-year perspective on the evolution of the relationship between artist and gallery in New York including how artists find galleries and stay with them (or not), what the artist should expect from the gallery, and what the gallery should expect from the artist. Ground covered will include how he found and gave first exhibitions to artists like Sean Scully and John Baldessari in the 1970’s to his continued and current interest in emerging artists. An opportunity for Q&A will be provided.
When: Monday, September 26, 2016 from 6:00 PM – 7:00 PM
Where: NYFA, 20 Jay Street, Suite 740, Brooklyn, NY 11201
Registration Now Open: The workshop is currently full. You can join the waiting list here.
Cost: $10
*Please note, this registration is for the talk only, to register for Doctor’s Hours appointments, please click here.
Michael Findlay is a Director of Acquavella Galleries, which specializes in Impressionist and Modern European works of art and post-war American painting and sculpture. The gallery shows leading contemporary artists including work of the late Lucian Freud, and represents Wayne Thiebaud. Acquavella presents major loan exhibitions of works from museums and private collections such as “Picasso’s Marie-Thérèse”(2008), “Portrait of a Collection: Robert and Ethel Scull” (2010), “Georges Braque—Pioneer of Modernism” (2011) “The Pop Object” (2013) and “Jean Dubuffet: Anticultural Positions”.
Born in Scotland in 1945 Mr. Findlay directed one of the first galleries in SoHo, New York City, in the 1960’s and ran his own gallery there 1969-1977. He was the first dealer in the United States to show the work of Joseph Beuys, Sean Scully and other European artists and gave American artists such as John Baldessari, Hannah Wilke, Stephen Mueller and Billy Sullivan their first solo exhibitions as well as representing veteran Abstract Expressionist Ray Parker.
From 1964 until 1984 Mr. Findlay bought and sold Impressionist and Twentieth century works of art on behalf of American and European private collectors and secured early portrait commissions for Andy Warhol.
In 1984 he joined Christie’s auction house and was head of the Impressionist and Modern paintings department until 1992 when he became International Director of Fine Arts and a member of Christie’s Board of Directors. He supervised the sale of many important collections: Mr. and Mrs Paul Mellon, Hal B. Wallis, Victor and Sally Ganz as well as the sale of “Dr. Gachet” by Vincent van Gogh for $82,500,000 in 1990. Findlay’s opened Christie’s office in Shanghai in 1994 with an exhibition of Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary masterpieces and in 1995 was part of a small team assisting the creation of a Western art program at the Shanghai Museum. He retired from Christie’s in 2000.
Since 2001 Mr. Findlay has served on the Art Advisory Panel for the Internal Revenue Service of the Treasury Department of the U.S. Government. He is on the Advisory Council of the Appraisers Association of America and on the Board of the Art Dealers Association of America Foundation, the British Schools & Universities Foundation and the New York Foundation for the Arts. He serves on the Academic Advisory Board of Christie’s Education.
In 2011 Findlay was keynote speaker at the international seminar in Spain on authentication sponsored by the Salvador Dalí Foundation. He has lectured at museums and universities including Seattle Art Museum, High Museum of Art, Bridgestone Museum (Tokyo), New York University, Washington & Lee University, Gakushuin Women’s College (Tokyo) and Beijing University.
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”, was published by Prestel in 2012, and has been translated into German, Spanish, Japanese and Korean. Mr. Findlay has two children and is married to the modern quilter Victoria Findlay Wolfe. They live in Manhattan and East Hampton.
Photo Credit: Victoria Findlay Wolfe.
