The Easel

18th November 2025

Studio Museum in Harlem Reopens in a Stunning New Home

Maximilliano Duran | ARTnews | 13th November 2025

After a seven-year closure, the Studio Museum in Harlem has re-opened in a “brilliant” new building. It can display three times as many works as previously. More space is allocated to an artist-in-residency program that boasts illustrious alumni. It is a moment of recognition for an institution that, initially “invisible” to the mainstream, has since had “grand influence [and] rewritten the canon” for artists of African descent. Claims its chairman, Studio Museum has helped “the margins … come to the centre”.

Malick Sidibé Was an Architect of Utopia and Purveyor of Nostalgia

Emmanuel Iduma | Art in America | 6th November 2025

Sidibé was in the right place at the right time, opening a photographic studio in Bamako just as Mali became independent. His images brim with the exuberance and pride of new nationhood, not anticipating the nation’s turbulent post-colonial politics. “There is no future to be glimpsed … but there is at least a hint of the uncomplicated past”. Sidibé’s vivid backdrops and sanguine subjects helped establish the visual vocabulary of African portrait photography.

11th November 2025

100 years of Calder’s circus

Kelsey Rose | Substack | 18th October 2025

Arriving in Paris in 1926, Calder wanted something to announce himself in art circles. He came up with a miniature circus, a work now enjoying a 100th anniversary show. Charm is not its only quality. It shows his interest in movement and his facility with wire, thus foreshadowing his sinuous wire portraits and mobiles. His circus has a whimsical quality much appreciated by art critics of the time. And, with performances that could go for two hours, “Cirque Calder predated performance art by forty years.”

This 17th-Century Female Artist Was Once a Bigger Star Than Rembrandt. Why Did History Forget About Johanna Koerten and Her Peers?

Meilan Solly | Smithsonian Magazine | 29th September 2025

Opportunities open to artistically inclined women in 17th century Holland were governed by class more than gender. With family support, they could become “art stars” and those that did sold work at Rembrandt-level prices, helping define the visual culture of that age.  However, female lace workers were poorly paid and anonymous despite lace being an expensive fabric. By the 19th century, art by men overshadowed everything and the preservation of works and reputations was prioritised accordingly.

Older links