The Easel

27th October 2026

Frick Collection Puts Spotlight on Siena’s Renaissance Role with Rare Bronze Sculpture Exhibition

Rena Gross | Frieze | 14th October 2026

Siena has long been overshadowed by glorious Florence. Renewed appreciation of early Renaissance Sienese painting is occurring and it is happening in sculpture too. Sienese sculptors focused heavily on bronze, even though it was more expensive than marble. Donatello and Vecchietta were widely influential, including on a later Michelangelo. They wanted their bronze works to have more “physical and emotional reality. [This was] a golden age of bronze sculpture”.

20th October 2026

Isamu Noguchi: ‘I am not a designer’ at High Museum of Art

Kristin Nord | Antiques and the Arts | 24th March 2026

A previous show of Noguchi lights and tables was dismissed by one critic as “clever but harmless”. A new, more expansive show positions him differently – as someone who combined sculpture, architecture, landscape, and civic projects into a single practice. His definition of sculpture, for instance, included some of what we now call design. For him, collaboration and “in-betweenness” were natural ways to work, something institutional narratives miss. “Noguchi’s work feels uncannily contemporary”.

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