Welcome back to Wall Power. It’s the slowest of slow weeks in the art world, but the late summer quiet belies the rush of activity behind the scenes as galleries install their September shows and auction houses await final decisions from the season’s biggest collections. Plenty of property is already booked for the fall, but the two highest-profile estates were still consulting with their advisors as late as last week.

In the meantime, I’m sharing my close read of Michael Findlay’s new memoir about dealing art in ’60s and early ’70s New York. Michael is best known of late for his role in the sale of Harry and Linda Macklowe’s collection in 2021 and 2022. Since the Macklowes had such an acrimonious divorce—and they could not agree on anything, including how to split their treasured art collection—a judge appointed Findlay as the receiver. His job was to maximize the sale value so that the proceeds could be split between the warring parties. The sales ended up totaling $922 million.

If you get a group of dealers and art advisors going on the subject, someone is going to start speculating about the fees that the judge awarded Findlay. Even a small slice—0.5 percent? 1 percent? 1.5 percent?—is still a nice score for an art dealer. But Findlay’s book isn’t about all of that. It isn’t even really about dealing art, though it chronicles his experiences arriving in New York in 1964 as a college dropout through the dawn of Studio 54 in 1977. It’s about the joy of art and the art world—something Findlay suspects has gotten a little lost in all of this talk about money. We’ll get to all of that.

But first…

• Len Riggio dies at 83: Art collector Len Riggio, the co-founder of Barnes & Noble, passed away today. With a net worth that once...