The Easel

18th August 2026

Dissidence for dummies

Pierre d’Alancaisez | The Critic | 12th August 2026

At Ai Weiwei’s first big show in London 15 years ago, he was hailed as an intellectually stimulating conceptual artist. A current show shows how much that reputation has shrunk. The works on display are often huge – a 49m inflatable boat, a three-tonne black glass chandelier, enormous flags – and address a profusion of issues. Some carry emotional impact while others are “self-aggrandising” or just “glib”. “Ai …  pretends to illuminate a problem whilst, in fact, obscuring it”.

11th August 2026

Portrait of a City review — a nostalgic stroll through a century of the American urban experience

Jackie Wullschlager | Financial Times | 3rd August 2026

A “nostalgic” exhibition that surveys a century of American photography. Stieglitz is generally credited with the first modernist photograph in 1907. From there America produced a roll call of great image makers, both men and women. Inevitably, much focus lands on that greatest of all melting pots, New York city. Some famous photographers, being recent immigrants, could empathise with their subjects “energy and appetite for change that is almost tangible”. Says one writer,  “exhilarating”.

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